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THE  FUNCTION  OP  THE  POET 
AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


THE 
FUNCTION  OF   THE   POET 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 
BY  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 

COIiL£CT£D  AND  £DIT£D  BY 
AliBEBT  MOKDEI.I. 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

MDCCCCXX 


COPYRIGHT,   1893  AND   1894,  BY  THE  CENTURY  COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT,   1920,   BY  HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


College 
Ubcarx 

en 

LI  5^ 


PREFACE 


The  Centenary  Celebration  of  James  Russell  Lowell 
last  year  showed  that  he  has  become  more  esteemed 
as  a  critic  and  essayist  than  as  a  poet.  Lowell  him- 
self felt  that  his  true  calling  was  in  critical  work 
rather  than  in  poetry,  and  he  wrote  very  little  verse 
in  the  latter  part  of  his  life.  He  was  somewhat  cha- 
grined that  the  poetic  flame  of  his  youth  did  not  con- 
tinue to  glow,  but  he  resigned  himself  to  his  fate; 
nevertheless,  it  should  be  remembered  that  "The 
Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,"  "The  Biglow  Papers,"  and 
"The  Commemoration  Ode"  are  enough  to  make 
the  reputation  of  any  poet. 

The  present  volume  sustains  Lowell's  right  to  be 
considered  one  of  the  great  American  critics.  The 
literary  merit  of  some  of  the  essays  herein  is  in  many 
respects  nowise  inferior  to  that  in  some  of  the  volumes 
he  collected  himself.  The  articles  are  all  exquisitely 
and  carefully  written,  and  the  style  of  even  the  book 
reviews  displays  that  quality  found  in  his  best  writ- 
ings which  Ferris  Greenslet  has  appropriately  de- 
scribed as  "savory."  That  such  a  quantity  of  good 
literature  by  so  able  a  writer  as  Lowell  should  have 
been  allowed  to  repose  buried  in  the  files  of  old  maga- 
zines so  long  is  rather  unfortunate.  The  fact  that 
[     V     ] 


PREFACE 

Lowell  did  not  collect  them  is  a  tribute  to  his  mod- 
esty, a  tribute  all  the  more  worthy  in  these  days  when 
some  writers  of  ephemeral  reviews  on  ephemeral 
books  think  it  their  duty  to  collect  their  opinions  in 
book  form. 

The  essays  herein  represent  the  matured  author 
as  they  were  written  in  the  latter  part  of  his  life,  be- 
tween his  thirty-sixth  and  fifty-seventh  years.  The 
only  early  essay  is  the  one  on  Poe.  It  appeared  in 
Graham's  Magazine  for  February,  1845,  and  was  re- 
printed by  Griswold  in  his  edition  of  Poe.  It  has  also 
been  reprinted  in  later  editions  of  Poe,  but  has  never 
been  included  in  any  of  Lowell's  works.  This  was 
no  doubt  due  to  the  slight  break  in  the  relations  be- 
tween Poe  and  Lowell,  due  to  Poe's  usual  accusa- 
tions of  plagiarism.  The  essay  still  remains  one  of 
the  best  on  Poe  ever  written. 

Though  Lowell  became  in  later  life  quite  conserv- 
ative and  academic,  it  should  not  be  thought  that 
these  essays  show  no  sympathy  with  liberal  ideas. 
He  was  also  appreciative  of  the  first  works  of  new 
writers,  and  had  good  and  prophetic  insight.  His  fa- 
vorable reviews  of  the  first  works  of  Howells  and 
James,  and  the  subsequent  career  of  these  two  men, 
indicate  the  sureness  of  Lowell's  critical  mind.  Many 
readers  will  enjoy,  in  these  days  of  the  ouija  board 
and  messages  from  the  dead,  the  raps  at  spiritualism 
here  and  there.  Moreover,  there  is  a  passage  in  the 
[     vi     ] 


PREFACE 

first  essay  showing  that  Lowell,  before  Freud,  under- 
stood the  psychoanalytic  theory  of  genius  in  its  con- 
nection with  childhood  memories.  The  passage  fol- 
lows Lowell's  narration  of  the  story  of  Uttle  Mon- 
tague. 

None  of  the  essays  in  this  volume  has  appeared 
in  book  form  except  a  few  fragments  from  some  of 
the  opening  five  essays  which  were  reported  from 
Lowell's  lectures  in  the  Boston  Advertiser,  in  1855, 
and  were  privately  printed  some  years  ago.  Charles 
Eliot  Norton  performed  a  service  to  the  world  when 
he  published  in  the  Century  Magazine  in  1893  and 
1894  some  lectures  from  Lowell's  manuscripts.  These 
lectures  are  now  collected  and  form  the  first  five  es- 
says in  this  book.  I  have  also  retained  Professor  Nor- 
ton's introductions  and  notes.  Attention  is  called  to 
his  remark  that  "The  Function  of  the  Poet"  is  not 
unworthy  to  stand  with  Sidney's  and  Shelley's  es- 
says on  poetry. 

The  rest  of  the  essays  in  this  volume  appeared  in 
Lowell's  lifetime  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  the  North 
American  Review,  and  the  Nation.  They  were  all 
anonymous,  but  are  assigned  to  Lowell  by  Greorge 
Willis  Cooke  in  his  "Bibliography  of  James  Russell 
Lowell."  Lowell  was  editor  of  the  Atlantic  from  the 
time  of  its  founding  in  1857  to  May,  1861.  He  was 
editor  of  the  North  American  Review  from  January, 
1864,  to  the  time  he  left  for  Europe  in  1872.  With 
I     vu     1 


PREFACE 

one  exception  (that  on  "Poetry  and  Nationalism** 
which  formed  the  greater  part  of  a  review  of  the 
poems  of  Howells's  friend  Piatt),  all  the  articles  from 
these  two  magazines,  reprinted  in  this  volmne,  ap- 
peared during  Lowell's  editorship.  These  articles 
include  reviews  of  poems  by  his  friends  Longfellow 
and  Whittier.  And  in  his  review  of  "The  Courtship 
of  Miles  Standish,"  Lowell  makes  effective  use  of  his 
scholarship  to  introduce  a  lengthy  and  interesting 
discourse  on  the  dactylic  hexameter. 

While  we  are  on  the  subject  of  the  New  England 
poets  a  word  about  the  present  misunderstanding  and 
tendency  to  underrate  them  may  not  be  out  of  place. 
Because  it  is  growing  to  be  the  consensus  of  opinion 
that  the  two  greatest  poets  America  has  produced 
are  Whitman  and  Poe,  it  does  not  follow  that  the 
New-Englanders  must  be  relegated  to  the  scrap- 
heap.  Nor  do  I  see  any  inconsistency  in  a  man  whose 
taste  permits  him  to  enjoy  both  the  free  verse  and 
unpuritanic  (if  I  may  coin  a  word)  poems  of  Masters 
and  Sandburg,  and  also  Whittier's  "Snow-Bound" 
and  Longfellow's  "Courtship  of  Miles  Standish." 
Though  these  poems  are  not  profound,  there  is  some- 
thing of  the  universal  in  them.  They  have  pleasant 
school-day  memories  for  all  of  us  and  will  no  doubt 
have  such  for  our  children. 

Lowell's  cosmopolitan  tastes  may  be  seen  in  his 
essays  on  men  so  different  as  Thackeray,  Swift,  and 
I     viii     ] 


PREFACE 

Plutarch.  Hardly  any  one  knows  that  he  even  wrote 
about  these  authors.  Lowell  preferred  Thackeray  to 
Dickens,  a  judgment  in  which  many  people  to-day 
no  longer  agree  with  him.  As  a  young  man  he  hated 
Swift,  but  he  gives  us  a  sane  study  of  him.  The  review 
of  Plutarch's  "Essays"  edited  by  Goodwin,  with  an 
introduction  by  Emerson,  is  also  of  interest. 

The  last  essay  in  the  volume  on  "A  Plea  for  Free- 
dom from  Speech  and  Figures  of  Speech-Makers" 
shows  Lowell's  satirical  powers  at  their  best.  Ferris 
Greenslet  tells  us,  in  his  book  on  Lowell,  that  the 
Philip  Vandal  whose  eloquence  Lowell  ridicules  is 
Wendell  Phillips.  The  essay  gives  Lowell's  humorous 
comments  on  various  matters,  especially  on  contem- 
porary types  of  orators,  reformers,  and  heroes.  It 
represents  Lowell  as  he  is  most  known  to  us,  the 
Lowell  who  is  always  ready  with  fun  and  who  set 
the  world  agog  with  his  "Biglow  Papers." 

Lowell's  work  as  a  critic  dates  from  the  rare  vol- 
ume "Conversations  on  Some  of  the  Old  Poets," 
published  in  1844  in  his  twenty-fifth  year,  includes 
his  best-known  volumes  "Among  My  Books"  and 
"My  Study  Windows,"  and  most  fitly  concludes 
with  the  "Latest  Literary  Essays,"  published  in  the 
year  of  his  death  in  1891.  My  sincere  hope  is  that 
this  book  will  not  be  found  to  be  an  unworthy  succes- 
sor to  these  volumes. 

Though  some  of  Lowell's  literary  opinions  are  old- 
[     ix     1 


PREFACE 

fashioned  to  us  (one  author  even  wrote  an  entire 
volume  to  demolish  Lowell's  reputation  as  a  critic), 
there  is  much  in  his  work  that  the  world  will  not  let 
die.  He  is  highly  regarded  abroad,  and  he  is  one  of 
the  few  men  in  our  literature  who  produced  creative 
criticism. 

Thanks  and  acknowledgments  are  due  the  CeU' 
tury  Magazine  and  the  literary  representatives  of 
Lowell,  for  permission  to  reprint  in  this  volume  the 
first  five  essays,  which  are  copyrighted  and  were  pub- 
lished in  the  Century  Magazine. 

AliBEBT  MORDELL 
Philadelphia,  January  13,  1920 


CONTENTS 
ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

The  Function  of  the  Poet  3 

With  note  by  Charles  Eliot  Norton.  Century  Maga- 
zine, January,  1894 

HuMOK,  Wit,  Fun,  and  Satibe  33 

With  note  by  Charles  Eliot  Norton.  Century  Maga- 
zine, November,  1893 

The  Five  Indispensable  Authors  (Homeb,  Dante, 
Cervantes,  Goethe,  Shakespeare)  61 

Century  Magazine,  December,  1893 

The  Imagination  68 

Century  Magazine,  March,  1894 

Critical  Fragments 

Century  Magazine,  May,  1894 
I.  Life  in  Literature  and  Language  89 

n.  Style  and  Manner  90 

m.  Kalevala  95 

REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

Henry  James:  James's  Tales  AND  Sketches  105 

The  Nation,  June  24,  1875 

Longfellow:  The  Courtship  op  Miles  Standish      115 
Atlantic  Monthly,  January,  1859 

Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn  123 

North  American  Review,  January,  1864 
[     xi      ] 


mm^mm 


CONTENTS 

Whittier:  In  War  Time,  and  Other  Poems  127 

North  American  Review,  January,  1864 

Home  Ballads  and  Poems  130 

Atlantic  Monthly,  November,  1860 
Snow-Bound:  A  Winter  Idyl  137 

North  American  Review,  April,  1866 

Poetry  and  Nationality  141 

North  American  Review,  October,  1868 

W.  D.  HowELLs:  Venetian  Life  146 

North  American  Review,  October,  1866 

Edgar  A.  Poe  153 

Graham's  Magazine,  February,  1845;  R.  W.  Gris- 
wold's  edition  of  Poe's  Works  (1850) 

Thackeray:  Roundabout  Papers  166 

North  American  Review,  April,  1864 

TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

Swift:  Forster's  Life  of  Swift  173 

The  Nation,  AprU  13  and  20,  1876 

Plutarch's  Morals  200 

North  American  Review.  Aoril,  1871 

A  Plea  for  Freedom  from  Speech  and  Figures  of 
Speech-Makers  205 

Atlantic  Monthly,  December,  1860 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  POET 

This  was  the  concluding  lecture  in  the  coiu-se  which  Lowell 
read  before  the  Lowell  Institute  in  the  winter  of  1855. 
Doubtless  Lowell  never  printed  it  because,  as  his  genius 
matured,  he  felt  that  its  assertions  were  too  absolute,  and 
that  its  style  bore  too  many  marks  of  haste  in  composition, 
and  was  too  rhetorical  for  an  essay  to  be  read  in  print.  How 
rapid  was  the  growth  of  his  intellectual  judgment,  and  the 
broadening  of  his  imaginative  view,  may  be  seen  by  com- 
paring it  with  his  essays  on  Swinburne,  on  Percival,  and  on 
Rousseau,  published  in  1866  and  1867  —  essays  in  which 
the  topics  of  this  lecture  were  touched  upon  anew,  though 
not  treated  at  large. 

But  the  spirit  of  this  lecture  is  so  fine,  its  tone  so  full  of 
the  enthusiasm  of  youth,  its  conception  of  the  poet  so  lofty, 
and  the  truths  it  contains  so  important,  that  it  may  well 
be  prized  as  the  expression  of  a  genius  which,  if  not  yet 
mature,  is  already  powerful,  and  aquiline  alike  in  vision  and 
in  sweep  of  wing.  It  is  not  unworthy  to  stand  with  Sidney's 
and  with  Shelley's  "Defence  of  Poesy,"  and  it  is  fitted  to 
warm  and  inspire  the  poetic  heart  of  the  youth  of  this  gen- 
eration, no  less  than  of  that  to  which  it  was  first  addressed. 
As  a  close  to  the  lecture  Lowell  read  his  beautiful  (then 
unpublished)  poem  "To  the  Muse." 

Charles  Eliot  Norton 

Whether,  as  some  philosophers  assume,  we  possess 
only  the  fragments  of  a  great  cycle  of  knowledge  in 
whose  centre  stood  the  primeval  man  in  friendly  rela- 
tion with  the  powers  of  the  universe,  and  build  our 
hovels  out  of  the  ruins  of  our  ancestral  palace;  or 
whether,  according  to  the  development  theory  of 
[     3     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

others,  we  are  rising  gradually,  and  have  come  up  out 
of  an  atom  instead  of  descending  from  an  Adam,  so 
that  the  proudest  pedigree  might  run  up  to  a  barnacle 
or  a  zoophyte  at  last,  are  questions  that  will  keep  for 
a  good  many  centuries  yet.  Confining  myself  to  what 
little  we  can  learn  from  history,  we  find  tribes  rising 
slowly  out  of  barbarism  to  a  higher  or  lower  point  of 
culture  and  civility,  and  everywhere  the  poet  also  is 
foimd,  under  one  name  or  other,  changing  in  certain 
outward  respects,  but  essentially  the  same. 
And  however  far  we  go  back,  we  shall  find  this  also 

—  that  the  poet  and  the  priest  were  united  originally 
in  the  same  person;  which  means  that  the  poet  was  he 
who  was  conscious  of  the  world  of  spirit  as  well  as 
that  of  sense,  and  was  the  ambassador  of  the  gods  to 
men.  This  was  his  highest  function,  and  hence  his 
name  of  "seer."  He  was  the  discoverer  and  declarer 
of  the  perennial  beneath  the  deciduous.  His  were  the 
epea  pteroenta,  the  true  "winged  words"  that  could 
fly  down  the  unexplored  future  and  carry  the  names 
of  ancestral  heroes,  of  the  brave  and  wise  and  good. 
It  was  thus  that  the  poet  could  reward  virtue,  and, 
by  and  by,  as  society  grew  more  complex,  could  burn 
in  the  brand  of  shame.  This  is  Homer's  character  of 
Demodocus,  in  the  eighth  book  of  the  "Odyssey," 
"whom  the  Muse  loved  and  gave  the  good  and  ill" 

—  the  gift  of  conferring  good  or  evil  immortality. 
The  first  histories  were  in  verse;  and  simg  as  they 

[      4      ] 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  POET 

were  at  feasts  and  gatherings  of  the  people,  they 
awoke  in  men  the  desire  of  fame,  which  is  the  first 
promoter  of  courage  and  self-trust,  because  it 
teaches  men  by  degrees  to  appeal  from  the  present 
to  the  future.  We  may  fancy  what  the  influence  of 
the  early  epics  was  when  they  were  recited  to  men 
who  claimed  the  heroes  celebrated  in  them  for  their 
ancestors,  by  what  Bouchardon,  the  sculptor,  said, 
only  two  centuries  ago:  "When  I  read  Homer,  I  feel 
as  if  I  were  twenty  feet  high."  Nor  have  poets  lost 
their  power  over  the  future  in  modern  times.  Dante 
lifts  up  by  the  hair  the  face  of  some  petty  traitor,  the 
Smith  or  Brown  of  some  provincial  Italian  town,  lets 
the  fire  of  his  Inferno  glare  upon  it  for  a  moment,  and 
it  is  printed  forever  on  the  memory  of  mankind.  The 
historians  may  iron  out  the  shoulders  of  Richard  the 
Third  as  smooth  as  they  can,  they  will  never  get  over 
the  wrench  that  Shakespeare  gave  them. 

The  peculiarity  of  almost  all  early  literature  is  that 
it  seems  to  have  a  double  meaning,  that,  underneath 
its  natural,  we  find  ourselves  continually  seeing  or 
suspecting  a  supernatural  meaning.  In  the  older  epics 
the  characters  seem  to  be  half  typical  and  only  half 
historical.  Thus  did  the  early  poets  endeavor  to  make 
realities  out  of  appearances;  for,  except  a  few  typi- 
cal men  in  whom  certain  ideas  get  embodied,  the 
generations  of  mankind  are  mere  apparitions  who 
come  out  of  the  dark  for  a  purposeless  moment,  and 
[     5     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

reenter  the  dark  again  after  they  have  performed  the 
nothing  they  came  for. 

Gradually,  however,  the  poet  as  the  "seer"  be- 
came secondary  to  the  "maker."  His  office  became 
that  of  entertainer  rather  than  teacher.  But  always 
something  of  the  old  tradition  was  kept  aUve.  And  if 
he  has  now  come  to  be  looked  upon  merely  as  the  best 
expresser,  the  gift  of  seeing  is  implied  as  necessarily 
antecedent  to  that,  and  of  seeing  very  deep,  too.  K 
any  man  would  seem  to  have  written  without  any 
conscious  moral,  that  man  is  Shakespeare.  But  that 
must  be  a  dull  sense,  indeed,  which  does  not  see 
through  his  tragic  —  yes,  and  his  comic  —  masks 
awful  eyes  that  flame  with  something  intenser  and 
deeper  than  a  mere  scenic  meaning  —  a  meaning  out 
of  the  great  deep  that  is  behind  and  beyond  aU  human 
and  merely  personal  character.  Nor  was  Shakespeare 
himself  unconscious  of  his  place  as  a  teacher  and  pro- 
foimd  moralist:  witness  that  sonnet  in  which  he 
bewails  his  having  neglected  sometimes  the  errand 
that  was  laid  upon  him : 

Alas,  't  is  true  I  have  gone  here  and  there. 

And  made  myself  a  motley  to  the  view. 

Gored  mine  own  thoughts,  sold  cheap  what  is  most  dear, 

Made  old  ofifences  of  afifections  new; 

Most  true  it  is  that  I  have  look'd  on  truth 

Askance  and  strangely; 

the  application  of  which  is  made  clear  by  the  next  son- 
net, in  which  he  distinctly  alludes  to  his  profession. 
[61 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  POET 

There  is  this  unmistakable  stamp  on  all  the  great 
poets  —  that,  however  in  httle  things  they  may  fall 
below  themselves,  whenever  there  comes  a  great 
and  noble  thing  to  say,  they  say  it  greatly  and 
nobly,  and  bear  themselves  most  easily  in  the  royal- 
ties of  thought  and  language.  There  is  not  a  mature 
play  of  Shakespeare's  in  which  great  ideas  do  not  jut 
up  in  mountainous  permanence,  marking  forever  the 
boundary  of  provinces  of  thought,  and  known  afar 
to  many  kindreds  of  men. 

And  it  is  for  this  kiild  of  sight,  which  we  call  in- 
sight, and  not  for  any  faculty  of  observation  and  de- 
scription, that  we  value  the  poet.  It  is  in  proportion 
as  he  has  this  that  he  is  an  adequate  expresser,  and 
not  a  juggler  with  words.  It  is  by  means  of  this  that 
for  every  generation  of  man  he  plays  the  part  of 
"namer."  Before  him,  as  before  Adam,  the  crea- 
tion passes  to  be  named  anew:  first  the  material 
world;  then  the  world  of  passions  and  emotions;  then 
the  world  of  ideas.  But  whenever  a  great  imagination 
comes,  however  it  may  deUght  itseK  with  imaging  the 
outward  beauty  of  things,  however  it  may  seem  to 
flow  thoughtlessly  away  in  music  like  a  brook,  yet 
the  shadow  of  heaven  lies  also  in  its  depth  beneath 
the  shadow  of  earth.  Continually  the  visible  universe 
suggests  the  invisible.  We  are  forever  feeling  this  in 
Shakespeare.  His  imagination  went  down  to  the  very 
bases  of  things,  and  while  his  characters  are  the  most 
[     7     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

natural  that  poet  ever  created,  they  are  also  per- 
fectly ideal,  and  are  more  truly  the  personifications 
of  abstract  thoughts  and  passions  than  those  of  any 
allegorical  writer  whatever. 

Even  in  what  seems  so  purely  a  picturesque  poem 
as  the  "Iliad,"  we  feel  something  of  this.  Behold- 
ing as  Homer  did,  from  the  tower  of  contemplation, 
the  eternal  mutability  and  nothing  permanent  but 
change,  he  must  look  underneath  the  show  for  the 
reality.  Great  captains  and  conquerors  came  forth 
out  of  the  eternal  silence,  entered  it  again  with  their 
trampling  hosts,  and  shoutings,  and  trumpet-blasts, 
and  were  as  utterly  gone  as  those  echoes  of  their  deeds 
which  he  sang,  and  which  faded  with  the  last  sound 
of  his  voice  and  the  last  tremble  of  his  lyre.  History 
relating  outward  events  alone  was  an  unmeaning 
gossip,  with  the  world  for  a  village.  This  life  could 
only  become  other  than  phantasmagoric,  could  only 
become  real,  as  it  stood  related  to  something  that  was 
higher  and  permanent.  Hence  the  idea  of  Fate,  of 
a  higher  power  unseen  —  that  shadow,  as  of  an  eagle 
circling  to  its  swoop,  which  flits  stealthily  and  swiftly 
across  the  windy  plains  of  Troy.  In  the  "Odyssey'* 
we  find  pure  allegory. 

Now,  under  all  these  names  —  praiser,  seer,  sooth- 
sayer —  we  find  the  same  idea  lurking.  The  poet  is  he 
who  can  best  see  and  best  say  what  is  ideal  —  what 
belongs  to  the  world  of  soul  and  of  beauty.  Whether 
[      8      1 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  POET 

he  celebrate  the  brave  and  good  man,  or  the  gods,  or 
the  beautiful  as  it  appears  in  man  or  nature,  some- 
thing of  a  religious  character  still  clings  to  him;  he  is 
the  revealer  of  Deity.  He  may  be  unconscious  of  his 
mission;  he  may  be  false  to  it;  but  in  proportion  as  he 
is  a  great  poet,  he  rises  to  the  level  of  it  the  more 
often.  He  does  not  always  directly  rebuke  what  is  bad 
and  base,  but  indirectly  by  making  us  feel  what  de- 
light there  is  in  the  good  and  fair.  If  he  besiege  evil, 
it  is  with  such  beautiful  engines  of  war  (as  Plutarch 
tells  us  of  Demetrius)  that  the  besieged  themselves 
are  charmed  with  them.  Whoever  reads  the  great 
poets  cannot  but  be  made  better  by  it,  for  they  al- 
ways introduce  him  to  a  higher  society,  to  a  greater 
style  of  manners  and  of  thinking.  Whoever  learns  to 
love  what  is  beautiful  is  made  incapable  of  the  low 
and  mean  and  bad.  If  Plato  excludes  the  poets  from 
his  Republic,  it  is  expressly  on  the  ground  that  they 
speak  unworthy  things  of  the  gods;  that  is,  that  they 
have  lost  the  secret  of  their  art,  and  use  artificial 
types  instead  of  speaking  the  true  universal  language 
of  imagination.  He  who  translates  the  divine  into  the 
vulgar,  the  spiritual  into  the  sensual,  is  the  reverse 
of  a  poet. 

The  poet,  imder  whatever  name,  always  stands  for 

the  same  thing  —  imagination.  And  imagination  in 

its  highest  form  gives  him  the  power,  as  it  were,  of 

assuming  the  consciousness  of  whatever  he  speaks 

[     9     1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

about,  whether  man  or  beast,  or  rock  or  tree.  It  is  the 
ring  of  Canace,  which  whoso  has  on  understands  the 
language  of  all  created  things.  And  as  regards  expres- 
sion, it  seems  to  enable  the  poet  to  condense  the 
whole  of  himself  into  a  single  word.  Therefore,  when 
a  great  poet  has  said  a  thing,  it  is  finally  and  utterly 
expressed,  and  has  as  many  meanings  as  there  are 
men  who  read  his  verse.  A  great  poet  is  something 
more  than  an  interpreter  between  man  and  nature; 
he  is  also  an  interpreter  between  man  and  his  own 
nature.  It  is  he  who  gives  us  those  key-words,  the 
possession  of  which  makes  us  masters  of  all  the  un- 
suspected treasure-caverns  of  thought,  and  feeling, 
and  beauty  which  open  under  the  dusty  path  of  our 
daily  life. 

And  it  is  not  merely  a  dry  lexicon  that  he  compiles, 
—  a  thing  which  enables  us  to  translate  from  one 
dead  dialect  into  another  as  dead,  —  but  all  his  verse 
is  instinct  with  music,  and  his  words  open  windows 
on  every  side  to  pictures  of  scenery  and  life.  The  dif- 
ference between  the  dry  fact  and  the  poem  is  as  great 
as  that  between  reading  the  shipping  news  and  seeing 
the  actual  coming  and  going  of  the  crowd  of  stately 
ships,  —  "the  city  on  the  inconstant  billows  danc- 
ing," —  as  there  is  between  ten  minutes  of  happiness 
and  ten  minutes  by  the  clock.  Everybody  remembers 
the  story  of  the  little  Montague  who  was  stolen  and 
sold  to  the  chimney-sweep:  how  he  could  dimly  re- 
[     10     1 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  POET 

member  lying  in  a  beautiful  chamber;  how  he  carried 
with  him  in  all  his  drudgery  the  vision  of  a  fair,  sad 
mother's  face  that  sought  him  everywhere  in  vain; 
how  he  threw  himself  one  day,  all  sooty  as  he  was 
from  his  toil,  on  a  rich  bed  and  fell  asleep,  and  how  a 
kind  person  woke  him,  questioned  him,  pieced  to- 
gether his  broken  recollections  for  him,  and  so  at  last 
made  the  visions  of  the  beautiful  chamber  and  the 
fair,  sad  countenance  real  to  him  again.  It  seems  to 
me  that  the  ojffices  that  the  poet  does  for  us  are  typi- 
fied in  this  nursery-tale.  We  all  of  us  have  our  vague 
reminiscences  of  the  stately  home  of  our  childhood, 
—  for  we  are  all  of  us  poets  and  geniuses  in  our  youth, 
while  earth  is  all  new  to  us,  and  the  chalice  of  every 
buttercup  is  brimming  with  the  wine  of  poesy,  — 
and  we  all  remember  the  beautiful,  motherly  counte- 
nance which  nature  bent  over  us  there.  But  somehow 
we  all  get  stolen  away  thence;  life  becomes  to  us  a 
sooty  taskmaster,  and  we  crawl  through  dark  pas- 
sages without  end  —  till  suddenly  the  word  of  some 
poet  redeems  us,  makes  us  know  who  we  are,  and  of 
helpless  orphans  makes  us  the  heir  to  a  great  estate. 
It  is  to  our  true  relations  with  the  two  great  worlds  of 
outward  and  inward  nature  that  the  poet  reintro- 
duces us. 

But  the  imagination  has  a  deeper  use  than  merely 
to  give  poets  a  power  of  expression.  It  is  the  everlast- 
ing preserver  of  the  world  from  blank  materiaUsm. 
[     11     1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

It  forever  puts  matter  in  the  wrong,  and  compels  it  to 
show  its  title  to  existence.  Wordsworth  tells  us  that 
in  his  youth  he  was  sometimes  obliged  to  touch  the 
walls  to  find  if  they  were  visionary  or  no,  and  such 
experiences  are  not  uncommon  with  persons  who  con- 
verse much  with  their  own  thoughts.  Dr.  Johnson 
said  that  to  kick  one's  foot  against  a  stone  was  a  suf- 
ficient confutation  of  Berkeley,  and  poor  old  Pyrrho 
has  passed  into  a  proverb  because,  denying  the  ob- 
jectivity of  matter,  he  was  run  over  by  a  cart  and 
killed.  But  all  that  he  aflfirmed  was  that  to  the  soul 
the  cart  was  no  more  real  than  its  own  imaginative 
reproduction  of  it,  and  perhaps  the  shade  of  the  phi- 
losopher ran  up  to  the  first  of  his  deriders  who  crossed 
the  Styx  with  a  triumphant  "  I  told  you  so !  The  cart 
did  not  run  over  me,  for  here  I  am  without  a  bone 
broken." 

And,  in  another  sense  also,  do  those  poets  who  deal 
with  human  character,  as  all  the  greater  do,  continu- 
ally suggest  to  us  the  purely  phantasmal  nature  of 
life  except  as  it  is  related  to  the  world  of  ideas.  For 
are  not  their  personages  more  real  than  most  of  those 
in  history?  Is  not  Lear  more  authentic  and  permanent 
than  Lord  Raglan?  Their  realm  is  a  purely  spiritual 
one  in  which  space  and  time  and  costume  are  nothing. 
What  matters  it  that  Shakespeare  puts  a  seaport  in 
Bohemia,  and  knew  less  geography  than  Tommy  who 
goes  to  the  district  school?  He  understood  eternal 
[     12     ] 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  POET 

boundaries,  such  as  are  laid  down  on  no  chart,  and 
are  not  defined  by  such  transitory  affairs  as  mountain 
chains,  rivers,  and  seas. 

No  great  movement  of  the  human  mind  takes 
place  without  the  concurrent  beat  of  those  two  wings, 
the  imagination  and  the  understanding.  It  is  by  the 
understanding  that  we  are  enabled  to  make  the  most 
of  this  world,  and  to  use  the  collected  material  of  ex- 
perience in  its  condensed  form  of  practical  wisdom; 
and  it  is  the  imagination  which  forever  beckons  to- 
ward that  other  world  which  is  always  future,  and 
makes  us  discontented  with  this.  The  one  rests  upon 
experience;  the  other  leans  forward  and  listens  after 
the  inexperienced,  and  shapes  the  features  of  that 
future  with  which  it  is  forever  in  travail.  The  imag- 
ination might  be  defined  as  the  common  sense  of  the 
invisible  world,  as  the  understanding  is  of  the  visi- 
ble; and  as  those  are  the  finest  individual  characters 
in  which  the  two  moderate  and  rectify  each  other,  so 
those  are  the  finest  eras  where  the  same  may  be  said 
of  society.  In  the  voyage  of  life,  not  only  do  we  de- 
pend on  the  needle,  true  to  its  earthly  instincts,  but 
upon  observation  of  the  fixed  stars,  those  beacons 
lighted  upon  the  eternal  promontories  of  heaven 
above  the  stirs  and  shiftings  of  our  lower  system. 

But  it  seems  to  be  thought  that  we  have  come  upon 
the  earth  too  late,  that  there  has  been  a  feast  of  imag- 
ination formerly,  and  all  that  is  left  for  us  is  to  steal 
I     13     1 


y" 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

the  scraps.  We  hear  that  there  is  no  poetry  in  rail- 
roads and  steamboats  and  telegraphs,  and  especially 
none  in  Brother  Jonathan.  If  this  be  true,  so  much 
the  worse  for  him.  But  because  he  is  a  materialist, 
shall  there  be  no  more  poets?  When  we  have  said  that 
we  live  in  a  materialistic  age  we  have  said  something 
which  meant  more  than  we  intended.  If  we  say  it  in 
the  way  of  blame,  we  have  said  a  foolish  thing,  for 
probably  one  age  is  as  good  as  another,  and,  at  any 
rate,  the  worst  is  good  enough  company  for  us.  The 
age  of  Shakespeare  was  richer  than  our  own,  only  be- 
cause it  was  lucky  enough  to  have  such  a  pair  of  eyes 
as  his  to  see  it,  and  such  a  gift  of  speech  as  his  to  re- 
port it.  And  so  there  is  always  room  and  occasion  for 
the  poet,  who  continues  to  be,  just  as  he  was  in  the 
early  time,  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  "seer."  He 
is  always  the  man  who  is  willing  to  take  the  age  he 
lives  in  on  trust,  as  the  very  best  that  ever  was. 
Shakespeare  did  not  sit  down  and  cry  for  the  water  of 
Helicon  to  turn  the  wheels  of  his  little  private  mill 
at  the  Bankside.  He  appears  to  have  gone  more 
quietly  about  his  business  than  any  other  playwright 
in  London,  to  have  drawn  off  what  water-power  he 
needed  from  the  great  prosy  current  of  affairs  that 
flows  alike  for  all  and  in  spite  of  all,  to  have  ground 
for  the  public  what  grist  they  wanted,  coarse  or  fine, 
and  it  seems  a  mere  piece  of  luck  that  the  smooth 
stream  of  his  activity  reflected  with  such  ravishing 
[     14     1 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  POET 

clearness  every  changing  mood  of  heaven  and  earth, 
every  stick  and  stone,  every  dog  and  clown  and  court- 
ier that  stood  upon  its  brink.  It  is  a  curious  illustra- 
tion of  the  friendly  manner  in  which  Shakespeare 
received  everything  that  came  along,  —  of  what  a 
'present  man  he  was,  —  that  in  the  very  same  year 
that  the  mulberry-tree  was  brought  into  England,  he 
got  one  and  planted  it  in  his  garden  at  Stratford. 

It  is  perfectly  true  that  this  is  a  materialistic  age, 
and  for  that  very  reason  we  want  our  poets  all  the 
more.  We  find  that  every  generation  contrives  to 
catch  its  singing  larks  without  the  sky's  falling. 
When  the  poet  comes,  he  always  turns  out  to  be  the 
man  who  discovers  that  the  passing  moment  is  the 
inspired  one,  and  that  the  secret  of  poetry  is  not  to 
have  lived  in  Homer's  day,  or  Dante's,  but  to  be  ahve 
now.  To  be  alive  now,  that  is  the  great  art  and  mys- 
tery. They  are  dead  men  who  live  in  the  past,  and 
men  yet  unborn  that  live  in  the  future.  We  are  like 
Hans  in  Luck,  forever  exchanging  the  burdensome 
good  we  have  for  something  else,  till  at  last  we  come 
home  empty-handed. 

That  pale-faced  drudge  of  Time  opposite  me  there, 
that  weariless  sexton  whose  callous  hands  bury  our 
rosy  hours  in  the  irrevocable  past,  is  even  now  reach- 
ing forward  to  a  moment  as  rich  in  life,  in  character, 
and  thought,  as  full  of  opportunity,  as  any  since 
Adam.  This  little  isthmus  that  we  are  now  standing 
I     15     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

on  is  the  point  to  which  martyrs  in  their  triumphant 
pain,  prophets  in  their  fervor,  and  poets  in  their 
ecstasy,  looked  forward  as  the  golden  future,  as  the 
land  too  good  for  them  to  behold  with  mortal  eyes; 
it  is  the  point  toward  which  the  faint-hearted  and 
desponding  hereafter  will  look  back  as  the  priceless 
past  when  there  was  still  some  good  and  virtue  and 
opportunity  left  in  the  world. 

The  people  who  feel  their  own  age  prosaic  are  those 
who  see  only  its  costume.  And  that  is  what  makes  it 
prosaic  —  that  we  have  not  faith  enough  in  ourselves 
to  think  our  own  clothes  good  enough  to  be  presented 
to  posterity  in.  The  artists  fancy  that  the  court  dress 
of  posterity  is  that  of  Van  Dyck's  time,  or  Caesar's.  I 
have  seen  the  model  of  a  statue  of  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
—  a  statesman  whose  merit  consisted  in  yielding 
gracefully  to  the  present,  —  in  which  the  sculptor  had 
done  his  best  to  travesty  the  real  man  into  a  make- 
believe  Roman.  At  the  period  when  England  pro- 
duced its  greatest  poets,  we  find  exactly  the  reverse 
of  this,  and  we  are  thankful  that  the  man  who  made 
the  monument  of  Lord  Bacon  had  genius  to  copy 
every  button  of  his  dress,  everything  down  to  the 
rosettes  on  his  shoes,  and  then  to  write  under  his 
statue,  "Thus  sat  Francis  Bacon"  —  not  "Cneius 
Pompeius"  —  "Viscount  Verulam."  Those  men  had 
faith  even  in  their  own  shoe-strings. 

After  all,  how  is  our  poor  scapegoat  of  a  nineteenth 
[     16     1 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  POET 

century  to  blame?  Why,  for  not  being  the  seven- 
teenth, to  be  sure!  It  is  always  raining  opportunity, 
but  it  seems  it  was  only  the  men  two  hundred  years 
ago  who  were  intelligent  enough  not  to  hold  their 
cups  bottom-up.  We  are  like  beggars  who  think  if  a 
piece  of  gold  drop  into  their  palm  it  must  be  counter- 
feit, and  would  rather  change  it  for  the  smooth-worn 
piece  of  familiar  copper.  And  so,  as  we  stand  in  our 
mendicancy  by  the  wayside.  Time  tosses  carefully 
the  great  golden  to-day  into  our  hats,  and  we  turn  it 
over  grumblingly  and  suspiciously,  and  are  pleasantly 
surprised  at  finding  that  we  can  exchange  it  for  beef 
and  potatoes.  Till  Dante's  time  the  Italian  poets 
thought  no  language  good  enough  to  put  their  noth- 
ings into  but  Latin,  —  and  indeed  a  dead  tongue  was 
the  best  for  dead  thoughts,  —  but  Dante  found  the 
common  speech  of  Florence,  in  which  men  bargained 
and  scolded  and  made  love,  good  enough  for  him,  and 
out  of  the  world  around  him  made  a  poem  such  as  no 
Roman  ever  sang. 

In  our  day,  it  is  said  despairingly,  the  understand- 
ing reigns  triumphant:  it  is  the  age  of  common  sense. 
If  this  be  so,  the  wisest  way  would  be  to  accept  it 
manfully.  But,  after  all,  what  is  the  meaning  of  it? 
Looking  at  the  matter  superficially,  one  would  say 
that  a  striking  difference  between  our  science  and 
that  of  the  world's  gray  fathers  is  that  there  is  every 
day  less  and  less  of  the  element  of  wonder  in  it.  What 
[     17     1 


ON  l^OETBY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

they  saw  written  in  light  upon  the  great  arch  of 
heaven,  and,  by  a  magnificent  reach  of  sympathy, 
of  which  we  are  incapable,  associated  with  the  fall  of 
monarchs  and  the  fate  of  man,  is  for  us  only  a  pro- 
fessor, a  piece  of  chalk,  and  a  blackboard.  The  solemn 
and  unapproachable  skies  we  have  vulgarized;  we 
have  peeped  and  botanized  among  the  flowers  of 
light,  pulled  off  every  petal,  fumbled  in  every  calyx, 
and  reduced  them  to  the  bare  stem  of  order  and  class. 
The  stars  can  no  longer  maintain  their  divine  re- 
serves, but  whenever  there  is  a  conjunction  and  con- 
gress of  planets,  every  enterprising  newspaper  sends 
thither  its  special  reporter  with  his  telescope.  Over 
those  arcana  of  life  where  once  a  mysterious  presence 
brooded,  we  behold  scientific  explorers  skipping  like 
so  many  incarnate  notes  of  interrogation.  We  pry 
into  the  counsels  of  the  great  powers  of  nature,  we 
keep  our  ears  at  the  keyhole,  and  know  everything 
that  is  going  to  happen.  There  is  no  longer  any  sacred 
inaccessibility,  no  longer  any  enchanting  unexpected- 
ness, and  life  turns  to  prose  the  moment  there  is 
nothing  unattainable.  It  needs  no  more  a  voice  out 
of  the  unknown  proclaiming  "Great  Pan  is  dead!" 
We  have  found  his  tombstone,  deciphered  the  arrow- 
headed  inscription  upon  it,  know  his  age  to  a  day, 
and  that  he  died  universally  regretted. 

Formerly  science  was  poetry.  A  mythology  which 
broods  over  us  in  our  cradle,  which  mingles  with  the 
[     18     ] 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  POET 

lullaby  of  the  nurse,  which  peoples  the  day  with  the 
possibility  of  divine  encounters,  and  night  with  inti- 
mation of  demonic  ambushes,  is  something  quite 
other,  as  the  material  for  thought  and  poetry,  from 
one  that  we  take  down  from  our  bookshelves,  as  sap- 
less as  the  shelf  it  stood  on,  as  remote  from  all  present 
sympathy  with  man  or  nature  as  a  town  history  with 
its  genealogies  of  Mr.  Nobody's  great-grandparents. 

We  have  utilized  everything.  The  Egyptians  found 
a  hint  of  the  solar  system  in  the  concentric  circles  of 
the  onion,  and  revered  it  as  a  symbol,  while  we  re- 
spect it  as  a  condiment  in  cookery,  and  can  pass 
through  all  Weathersfield  without  a  thought  of  the 
stars.  Our  world  is  a  museum  of  natural  historj';  that 
of  our  forefathers  was  a  museum  of  supernatural  his- 
tory. And  the  rapidity  with  which  the  change  has 
been  going  on  is  almost  startling,  when  we  consider 
that  so  modem  and  historical  a  personage  as  Queen 
Elizabeth  was  reigning  at  the  time  of  the  death  of 
Dr.  John  Faustus,  out  of  whose  story  the  Teutonic 
imagination  built  up  a  mythus  that  may  be  set  beside 
that  of  Prometheus. 

Science,  looked  at  scientifically,  is  bare  and  bleak 
enough.  On  those  sublime  heights  the  air  is  too  thin 
for  the  lungs,  and  blinds  the  eyes.  It  is  much  better 
living  down  in  the  valleys,  where  one  cannot  see  far- 
ther than  the  next  farmhouse.  Faith  was  never  found 
in  the  bottom  of  a  crucible,  nor  peace  arrived  at  by 
[     19     ] 


■n..  -■■■'r- 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

analysis  or  synthesis.  But  all  this  is  because  science 
has  become  too  grimly  intellectual,  has  divorced  it- 
self from  the  moral  and  imaginative  part  of  man.  Our 
results  are  not  arrived  at  in  that  spirit  which  led  Kep- 
ler (who  had  his  theory-traps  set  all  along  the  tracks 
of  the  stars  to  catch  a  discovery)  to  say,  "In  my 
opinion  the  occasions  of  new  discoveries  have  been 
no  less  wonderful  than  the  discoveries  themselves." 
But  we  are  led  back  continually  to  the  fact  that 
science  cannot,  if  it  would,  disengage  itself  from  hu- 
man nature  and  from  imagination.  No  two  men  have 
ever  argued  together  without  at  least  agreeing  in  this, 
that  something  more  than  proof  is  required  to  pro- 
duce conviction,  and  that  a  logic  which  is  capable  of 
grinding  the  stubbomest  facts  to  powder  (as  every 
man's  own  logic  always  is)  is  powerless  against  so  del- 
icate a  structure  as  the  brain.  Do  what  we  will,  we 
cannot  contrive  to  bring  together  the  yawning  edges 
of  proof  and  belief,  to  weld  them  into  one.  When 
Thor  strikes  Skrymir  with  his  terrible  hammer,  the 
giant  asks  if  a  leaf  has  fallen.  I  need  not  appeal  to  the 
Thors  of  argument  in  the  pulpit,  the  senate,  and  the 
mass-meeting,  if  they  have  not  sometimes  found  the 
popular  giant  as  provokingly  insensible.  The  V^  is 
nothing  in  comparison  with  the  chance-caught  smell 
of  a  single  flower  which  by  the  magic  of  association 
recreates  for  us  the  unquestioning  day  of  childhood. 
Demonstration  may  lead  to  the  very  gate  of  heaven, 
[     20     ] 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  POET 

but  there  she  makes  us  a  civil  bow,  and  leaves  us  to 
make  our  way  back  again  to  Faith,  who  has  the  key. 
That  science  which  is  of  the  intellect  alone  steps  with 
indifferent  foot  upon  the  dead  body  of  Belief,  if  only 
she  may  reach  higher  or  see  farther. 

But  we  cannot  get  rid  of  our  wonder  —  we  who 
have  brought  down  the  wild  lightning,  from  writing 
fiery  doom  upon  the  walls  of  heaven,  to  be  our  errand- 
boy  and  penny-postman.  Wonder  is  crude  imagina- 
tion; and  it  is  necessary  to  us,  for  man  shall  not  live 
by  bread  alone,  and  exact  knowledge  is  not  enough. 
Do  we  get  nearer  the  truth  or  farther  from  it  that  we 
have  got  a  gas  or  an  imponderable  fluid  instead  of  a 
spirit?  We  go  on  exorcising  one  thing  after  another, 
but  what  boots  it.?  The  evasive  genius  flits  into  some- 
thing else,  and  defies  us.  The  powers  of  the  outer  and 
inner  world  form  hand  in  hand  a  magnetic  circle  for 
whose  connection  man  is  necessary.  It  is  the  imagina- 
tion that  takes  his  hand  and  clasps  it  with  that  other 
stretched  to  him  in  the  dark,  and  for  which  he  was 
vainly  groping.  It  is  that  which  renews  the  mystery 
in  nature,  makes  it  wonderful  and  beautiful  again, 
and  out  of  the  gases  of  the  man  of  science  remakes  the 
old  spirit.  But  we  seem  to  have  created  too  many 
wonders  to  be  capable  of  wondering  any  longer;  as 
Coleridge  said,  when  asked  if  he  believed  in  ghosts, 
that  he  had  seen  too  many  of  them.  But  nature  all 
the  more  imperatively  demands  it,  and  science  can  at 
[     21     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

best  but  scotch  it,  not  kill  it.  In  this  day  of  news- 
papers and  electric  telegraphs,  in  which  common 
sense  and  ridicule  can  magnetize  a  whole  continent 
between  dinner  and  tea,  we  say  that  such  a  phenome- 
non as  Mahomet  were  impossible,  and  behold  Joe 
Smith  and  the  State  of  Deseret!  Turning  over  the 
yellow  leaves  of  the  same  copy  of  "  Webster  on  Witch- 
craft" which  Cotton  Mather  studied,  I  thought, 
"Well,  that  goblin  is  laid  at  last!"  —  and  while  I 
mused  the  tables  were  turning,  and  the  chairs  beating 
the  devil's  tattoo  all  over  Christendom.  I  have  a 
neighbor  who  dug  down  through  tough  strata  of  clay 
to  a  spring  pointed  out  by  a  witch-hazel  rod  in  the 
hands  of  a  seventh  son's  seventh  son,  and  the  water 
is  the  sweeter  to  him  for  the  wonder  that  is  mixed 
with  it.  After  all,  it  seems  that  our  scientific  gas,  be 
it  never  so  brilliant,  is  not  equal  to  the  dingy  old 
Aladdin's  lamp. 

It  is  impossible  for  men  to  live  in  the  world  without 
poetry  of  some  sort  or  other.  If  they  cannot  get  the 
best  they  will  get  some  substitute  for  it,  and  thus 
seem  to  verify  Saint  Augustine's  slur  that  it  is  wine 
of  devils.  The  mind  bound  down  too  closely  to  what 
is  practical  either  becomes  inert,  or  revenges  itself  by 
rushing  into  the  savage  wilderness  of  "isms."  The 
insincerity  of  our  civilization  has  disgusted  some  per- 
sons so  much  that  they  have  sought  refuge  in  Indian 
wigwams  and  found  refreshment  in  taking  a  scalp 
[     22     1 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  POET 

now  and  then.  Nature  insists  above  all  things  upon 
balance.  She  contrives  to  maintain  a  harmony  be- 
tween the  material  and  spiritual,  nor  allows  the  cere- 
brum an  expansion  at  the  cost  of  the  cerebellum.  K 
the  character,  for  example,  nm  on  one  side  into  reli- 
gious enthusiasm,  it  is  not  unlikely  to  develop  on  the 
other  a  counterpoise  of  worldly  prudence.  Thus  the 
Shaker  and  the  Moravian  are  noted  for  thrift,  and 
mystics  are  not  always  the  worst  managers.  Through 
all  changes  of  condition  and  experience  man  con- 
tinues to  be  a  citizen  of  the  world  of  idea  as  well  as  the 
world  of  fact,  and  the  tax-gatherers  of  both  are 
punctual. 

And  these  antitheses  which  we  meet  with  in  indi- 
vidual character  we  cannot  help  seeing  on  the  larger 
stage  of  the  world  also,  a  moral  accompanying  a  ma- 
terial development.  History,  the  great  satirist,  brings 
together  Alexander  and  the  blower  of  peas  to  hint  to 
us  that  the  tube  of  the  one  and  the  sword  of  the  other 
were  equally  transitory;  but  meanwhile  Aristotle  was 
conquering  kingdoms  out  of  the  unknown,  and  estab- 
lishing a  dynasty  of  thought  from  whose  hand  the 
sceptre  has  not  yet  passed.  So  there  are  Charles  V, 
and  Luther;  the  expansion  of  trade  resulting  from 
the  Spanish  and  Portuguese  discoveries,  and  the 
Ehzabethan  literature;  the  Puritans  seeking  spiritual 
El  Dorados  while  so  much  valor  and  thought  were 
spent  in  finding  mineral  ones.  It  seems  to  be  the 
[     23     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

purpose  of  God  that  a  certain  amount  of  genius  shall 
go  to  each  generation,  particular  quantities  being 
represented  by  individuals,  and  while  no  one  is  com- 
plete in  himself,  all  collectively  make  up  a  whole 
ideal  figure  of  a  man.  Nature  is  not  like  certain  vari- 
eties of  the  apple  that  cannot  bear  two  years  in 
succession.  It  is  only  that  her  expansions  are  uniform 
in  all  directions,  that  in  every  age  she  completes  her 
circle,  and  like  a  tree  adds  a  ring  to  her  growth  be  it 
thinner  or  thicker. 

Every  man  is  conscious  that  he  leads  two  lives,  the 
one  trivial  and  ordinary,  the  other  sacred  and  recluse; 
the  one  which  he  carries  to  the  dinner-table  and  to  his 
daily  work,  which  grows  old  with  his  body  and  dies 
with  it,  the  other  that  which  is  made  up  of  the  few 
inspiring  moments  of  his  higher  aspiration  and  at- 
tainment, and  in  which  his  youth  survives  for  him, 
his  dreams,  his  unquenchable  longings  for  something 
nobler  than  success.  It  is  this  life  which  the  poets 
nourish  for  him,  and  sustain  with  their  immortalizing 
nectar.  Through  them  he  feels  once  more  the  white 
innocence  of  his  youth.  His  faith  in  something  nobler 
than  gold  and  iron  and  cotton  comes  back  to  him, 
not  as  an  upbraiding  ghost  that  wrings  its  pale  hands 
and  is  gone,  but  beautiful  and  inspiring  as  a  first  love 
that  recognizes  nothing  in  him  that  is  not  high  and 
noble.  The  poets  are  nature's  perpetual  pleaders,  and 
protest  with  us  against  what  is  worldly.  Out  of  their 
[     24     ] 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  POET 

own  undying  youth  they  speak  to  ours.  "Wretched  is 
the  man,"  says  Goethe,  "who  has  learned  to  despise 
the  dreams  of  his  youth ! "  It  is  from  this  misery  that 
the  imagination  and  the  poets,  who  are  its  spokes- 
men, rescue  us.  The  world  goes  to  church,  kneels  to 
the  eternal  Purity,  and  then  contrives  to  sneer  at 
innocence  and  ignorance  of  evil  by  calling  it  green. 
Let  every  man  thank  God  for  what  little  there  may 
be  left  in  him  of  his  vernal  sweetness.  Let  him  thank 
God  if  he  have  still  the  capacity  for  feeling  an  un- 
marketable enthusiasm,  for  that  will  make  him  wor- 
thy of  the  society  of  the  noble  dead,  of  the  compan- 
ionship of  the  poets.  And  let  him  love  the  poets  for 
keeping  youth  young,  woman  womanly,  and  beauty 
beautiful. 

There  is  as  much  poetry  as  ever  in  the  world  if  we 
only  knew  how  to  find  it  out;  and  as  much  imagina- 
tion, perhaps,  only  that  it  takes  a  more  prosaic  direc- 
tion. Every  man  who  meets  with  misfortune,  who  is 
stripped  of  material  prosperity,  finds  that  he  has  a 
little  outlying  mountain-farm  of  imagination,  which 
did  not  appear  in  the  schedule  of  his  effects,  on  which 
his  spirit  is  able  to  keep  itself  alive,  though  he  never 
thought  of  it  while  he  was  fortunate.  Job  turns  out  to 
be  a  great  poet  as  soon  as  his  flocks  and  herds  are 
taken  away  from  him. 

There  is  no  reason  why  our  continent  should  not 
sing  as  well  as  the  rest.  We  have  had  the  practical 
I     25     1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

forced  upon  us  by  our  position.  We  have  had  a  whole 
hemisphere  to  clear  up  and  put  to  rights.  And  we  are 
descended  from  men  who  were  hardened  and  stiffened 
by  a  downright  wrestle  with  necessity.  There  was  no 
chance  for  poetry  among  the  Puritans.  And  yet  if  any 
people  have  a  right  to  imagination,  it  should  be  the 
descendants  of  these  very  Puritans.  They  had  enough 
of  it,  or  they  could  never  have  conceived  the  great 
epic  they  did,  whose  books  are  States,  and  which  is 
written  on  this  continent  from  Maine  to  California. 
But  there  seems  to  be  another  reason  why  we 
should  not  become  a  poetical  people.  Formerly  the 
poet  embodied  the  hopes  and  desires  of  men  in  visible 
types.  He  gave  them  the  shoes  of  swiftness,  the  cap  of 
invisibility  and  the  purse  of  Fortunatus.  These  were 
once  stories  for  grown  men,  and  not  for  the  nursery 
as  now.  We  are  apt  ignorantly  to  wonder  how  our 
forefathers  could  find  satisfaction  in  fiction  the  ab- 
surdity of  which  any  of  our  primary-school  children 
could  demonstrate.  But  we  forget  that  the  world's 
gray  fathers  were  children  themselves,  and  that  in 
their  little  world,  with  its  circle  of  the  black  unknown 
all  about  it,  the  imagination  was  as  active  as  it  is 
with  people  in  the  dark.  Look  at  a  child's  toys,  and 
we  shall  understand  the  matter  well  enough.  Imagi- 
nation is  the  fairy  godmother  (every  child  has  one 
still),  at  the  wave  of  whose  wand  sticks  become 
heroes,  the  closet  in  which  she  has  been  shut  fifty 
[     26     ] 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  POET 

times  for  being  naughty  is  turned  iuto  a  palace,  and 
a  bit  of  lath  acquires  all  the  potency  of  Excalibur. 

But  nowadays  it  is  the  understanding  itself  that 
has  turned  poet.  In  her  railroads  she  has  given  us  the 
shoes  of  swiftness.  Fine-Ear  herself  could  not  hear  so 
far  as  she,  who  in  her  magnetic  telegraph  can  listen  in 
Boston  and  hear  what  is  going  on  in  New  Orleans. 
And  what  need  of  Aladdin's  lamp  when  a  man  can 
build  a  palace  with  a  patent  pill?  The  office  of  the 
poet  seems  to  be  reversed,  and  he  must  give  back 
these  miracles  of  the  understanding  to  poetry  again, 
and  find  out  what  there  is  imaginative  in  steam  and 
iron  and  telegraph-wires.  After  all,  there  is  as  much 
poetry  in  the  iron  horses  that  eat  fire  as  in  those  of 
Diomed  that  fed  on  men.  If  you  cut  an  apple  across 
you  may  trace  in  it  the  lines  of  the  blossom  that  the 
bee  hummed  around  in  May,  and  so  the  soul  of  poetry 
survives  in  things  prosaic.  Borrowing  money  on  a 
bond  does  not  seem  the  most  promising  subject  in  the 
world,  but  Shakespeare  found  the  "Merchant  of 
Venice  "  in  it.  Themes  of  song  are  waiting  everywhere 
for  the  right  man  to  sing  them,  like  those  enchanted 
swords  which  no  one  can  pull  out  of  the  rock  till  the 
hero  comes,  and  he  finds  no  more  trouble  than  in 
plucking  a  violet. 

John  Quincy  Adams,  making  a  speech  at  New  Bed- 
ford, many  years  ago,  reckoned  the  number  of  whale- 
ships  (if  I  remember  rightly)  that  sailed  out  of  that 
[     27     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

port,  and,  comparing  it  with  some  former  period,  took 
it  as  a  type  of  American  success.  But,  alas !  it  is  with 
quite  other  oil  that  those  far-shining  lamps  of  a  na- 
tion's true  glory  which  burn  forever  must  be  filled.  It 
is  not  by  any  amount  of  material  splendor  or  pros- 
perity, but  only  by  moral  greatness,  by  ideas,  by 
works  of  imagination,  that  a  race  can  conquer  the 
future.  No  voice  comes  to  us  from  the  once  mighty 
Assyria  but  the  hoot  of  the  owl  that  nests  amid  her 
crumbling  palaces.  Of  Carthage,  whose  merchant- 
fleets  once  furled  their  sails  in  every  port  of  the 
known  world,  nothing  is  left  but  the  deeds  of  Hanni- 
bal. She  lies  dead  on  the  shore  of  her  once  subject  sea, 
and  the  wind  of  the  desert  only  flings  its  handfuls  of 
burial-sand  upon  her  corpse.  A  fog  can  blot  Holland 
or  Switzerland  out  of  existence.  But  how  large  is  the 
space  occupied  in  the  maps  of  the  soul  by  little  Athens 
and  powerless  Italy!  They  were  great  by  the  soul,  and 
their  vital  force  is  as  indestructible  as  the  soul. 

Till  America  has  learned  to  love  art,  not  as  an 
amusement,  not  as  the  mere  ornament  of  her  cities, 
not  as  a  superstition  of  what  is  comme  il  faut  for  a 
great  nation,  but  for  its  humanizing  and  ennobling 
energy,  for  its  power  of  making  men  better  by  arous- 
ing in  them  a  perception  of  their  own  instincts  for 
what  is  beautiful,  and  therefore  sacred  and  reUgious, 
and  an  eternal  rebuke  of  the  base  and  worldly,  she 
will  not  have  succeeded  in  that  high  sense  which  alone 
[     28     1 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  POET 

makes  a  nation  out  of  a  people,  and  raises  it  from  a 
dead  name  to  a  living  power.  Were  our  little  mother- 
island  sunk  beneath  the  sea,  or,  worse,  were  she  con- 
quered by  Scythian  barbarians,  yet  Shakespeare 
would  be  an  immortal  England,  and  would  conquer 
countries,  when  the  bones  of  her  last  sailor  had  kept 
their  ghastly  watch  for  ages  in  unhallowed  ooze  be- 
side the  quenched  thunders  of  her  navy. 

Old  Purchas  in  his  "Pilgrims"  tells  of  a  sacred 
caste  in  India  who,  when  they  go  out  into  the  street, 
cry  out,  "Poo!  Poo!"  to  warn  all  the  world  out  of 
their  way  lest  they  should  be  defiled  by  something 
unclean.  And  it  is  just  so  that  the  understanding  in 
its  pride  of  success  thinks  to  pooh-pooh  all  that  it 
considers  impractical  and  visionary.  But  whatever  of 
life  there  is  in  man,  except  what  comes  of  beef  and 
pudding,  is  in  the  visionary  and  unpractical,  and  if 
it  be  not  encouraged  to  find  its  activity  or  its  solace 
in  the  production  or  enjoyment  of  art  and  beauty,  if 
it  be  bewildered  or  thwarted  by  an  outward  profes- 
sion of  faith  covering  up  a  practical  unbelief  in  any- 
thing higher  and  holier  than  the  world  of  sense,  it 
will  find  vent  in  such  wretched  holes  and  corners  as 
table-tippings  and  mediums  who  sell  news  from 
heaven  at  a  quarter  of  a  dollar  the  item.  Imagination 
cannot  be  banished  out  of  the  world.  She  may  be 
made  a  kitchen-drudge,  a  Cinderella,  but  there  are 
powers  that  watch  over  her.  When  her  two  proud 
I     29     1 


\ 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

sisters,  the  intellect  and  understanding,  think  her 
crouching  over  her  ashes,  she  startles  and  charms  by 
her  splendid  apparition,  and  Prince  Soul  will  put  up 
with  no  other  bride. 

The  practical  is  a  very  good  thing  in  its  way  —  if 
it  only  be  not  another  name  for  the  worldly.  To  be 
absorbed  in  it  is  to  eat  of  that  insane  root  which  the 
soldiers  of  Antonius  found  in  their  retreat  from  Par- 
thia  —  which  whoso  tasted  kept  gathering  sticks  and 
stones  as  if  they  were  some  great  matter  till  he  died. 

One  is  forced  to  listen,  now  and  then,  to  a  kind  of 
talk  which  makes  him  feel  as  if  this  were  the  after- 
dinner  time  of  the  world,  and  mankind  were  doomed 
hereafter  forever  to  that  kind  of  contented  mate- 
rialism which  comes  to  good  stomachs  with  the 
nuts  and  raisins.  The  dozy  old  world  has  nothing  to 
do  now  but  stretch  its  legs  under  the  mahogany,  talk 
about  stocks,  and  get  rid  of  the  hours  as  well  as  it 
can  till  bedtime.  The  centuries  before  us  have  drained 
the  goblet  of  wisdom  and  beauty,  and  all  we  have 
left  is  to  cast  horoscopes  in  the  dregs.  But  divine 
beauty,  and  the  love  of  it,  will  never  be  without 
apostles  and  messengers  on  earth,  till  Time  flings 
his  hour-glass  into  the  abyss  as  having  no  need  to 
turn  it  longer  to  number  the  indistinguishable  ages 
of  Annihilation.  It  was  a  favorite  speculation  with 
the  learned  men  of  the  sixteenth  century  that  they 
had  come  upon  the  old  age  and  decrepit  second  child- 
[      30     ] 


THE  FUNCTIOX  OF  THE  POET 

hood  of  creation,  and  while  they  maundered,  the  soul 
of  Shakespeare  was  just  coining  out  of  the  eternal 
freshness  of  Deity,  "trailing"  such  "clouds  of  glory  ** 
as  would  beggar  a  Platonic  year  of  sunsets. 

No;  morning  and  the  dewy  prime  are  bom  into 
the  earth  again  with  every  child.  It  is  our  fault  if 
drought  and  dust  usurp  the  noon.  Every  age  says 
to  her  poets,  like  the  mistress  to  her  lover,  "Tell  me 
what  I  am  like";  and,  in  proportion  as  it  brings  forth 
anything  worth  seeing,  has  need  of  seers  and  will 
have  them.  Our  time  is  not  an  unpoetical  one.  We 
are  in  our  heroic  age,  still  face  to  face  with  the  shaggy 
forces  of  unsubdued  Nature,  and  we  have  our 
Theseuses  and  Perseuses,  though  they  may  be  named 
Israel  Putnam  and  Daniel  Boone.  It  is  nothing 
against  us  that  we  are  a  commercial  people.  Athens 
was  a  trading  community;  Dante  and  Titian  were 
the  growth  of  great  marts,  and  England  was  al- 
ready commercial  when  she  produced  Shakespeare. 

This  lesson  I  learn  from  the  past:  that  grace  and 
goodness,  the  fair,  the  noble,  and  the  true,  will  never 
cease  out  of  the  world  till  the  God  from  whom  they 
emanate  ceases  out  of  it;  that  they  manifest  them- 
selves in  an  eternal  continuity  of  change  to  every 
generation  of  men,  as  new  duties  and  occasions  arise; 
that  the  sacred  duty  and  noble  oflBce  of  the  poet  is 
to  reveal  and  justify  them  to  men;  that  so  long  as  the 
soul  endures,  endures  also  the  theme  of  new  and 
[     31     1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

unexampled  song;  that  while  there  is  grace  in  grace, 
love  in  love,  and  beauty  in  beauty,  God  will  still 
send  poets  to  find  them  and  bear  witness  of  them, 
and  to  hang  their  ideal  portraitures  in  the  gallery  of 
memory.  God  with  us  is  forever  the  mystical  name 
of  the  hour  that  is  passing.  The  lives  of  the  great 
poets  teach  us  that  they  were  the  men  of  their  gener- 
ation who  felt  most  deeply  the  meaning  of  the 
present. 


HUMOR,  WIT,  FUN,  AND  SATIRE 
PREFATORY  NOTE 

In  the  winter  of  1855,  when  Lowell  was  thirty-six  years  old, 
he  gave  a  course  of  twelve  lectures  before  the  Lowell  Insti- 
tute in  Boston.  His  subject  was  the  English  Poets,  and  the 
special  topics  of  the  successive  lectures  were:  1,  "Poetry, 
and  the  Poetic  Sentiment,"  illustrating  the  imaginative 
faculty;  2,  "Piers  Ploughman's  Vision,"  as  the  first  charac- 
teristically English  poem;  3,  "The  Metrical  Romances," 
marking  the  advent  into  our  poetry  of  the  sense  of  Beauty; 

4,  "The  Ballads,"  especially  as  models  of  narrative  diction; 

5,  Chaucer,  as  the  poet  of  real  life  —  the  poet  outside  of 
nature;  6,  Spenser,  as  the  representative  of  the  purely  poeti- 
cal; 7,  Milton,  as  representing  the  imaginative;  8,  Butler,  as 
the  wit;  9,  Pope,  as  the  poet  of  artificial  life;  10,  "On  Poetic 
Diction";  11,  Wordsworth,  as  representing  the  egotistic 
imaginative,  or  the  poet  feeling  himself  in  nature;  12,  "On 
the  Fimction  and  Prospects  of  Poetry." 

These  lectures  were  written  rapidly,  many  of  them  during 
the  period  of  delivery  of  the  course;  they  bore  marks  of 
hastiness  of  composition,  but  they  came  from  a  full  and 
rich  mind,  and  they  were  the  issues  of  familiar  studies  and 
long  reflection.  No  such  criticism,  at  once  abundant  in 
knowledge  and  in  sympathetic  insight,  and  distinguished 
by  breadth  of  view,  as  well  as  by  fluency,  grace,  and  power 
of  style,  had  been  heard  in  America.  They  were  listened  to 
by  large  and  enthusiastic  audiences,  and  they  did  much  to 
establish  Lowell's  position  as  the  ablest  of  living  critics  of 
poetry,  and,  in  many  respects,  as  the  foremost  of  American 
men  of  letters. 

In  the  same  year  he  was  made  Professor  of  Belles-Lettres 
in  Harvard  University,  and  after  spending  somewhat  more 
[     33     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

than  a  year  in  Europe,  in  special  preparation,  he  entered  in 
the  autumn  of  1856  upon  the  duties  of  the  chair,  which  he 
continued  to  occupy  till  1877,  when  he  was  appointed 
Minister  of  the  United  States  to  Spain. 

During  the  years  of  his  professorship  he  delivered  numer- 
ous courses  of  lectures  to  his  classes.  Few  of  them  were 
written  out,  but  they  were  given  more  or  less  extemporane- 
ously from  full  notes.  The  subject  of  these  courses  was  in 
general  the  "Study  of  Literature,"  treating  in  different 
years  of  different  special  topics,  from  the  literature  of 
Northern  to  that  of  Southern  Europe,  from  the  Kalevala 
and  the  Niebelungen  Lied  to  the  Provencal  poets;  from 
Wolfram  von  Eschenbach  to  Rousseau;  from  the  cycle  of 
romances  of  Charlemagne  and  his  peers  to  Dante  and 
Shakespeare.  Some  of  these  lectures,  or  parts  of  them,  were 
afterward  prepared  for  publication,  with  such  changes  as 
were  required  to  give  them  proi)er  literary  form;  and  the 
readers  of  Lowell's  prose  works  know  what  gifts  of  native 
power,  what  large  and  solid  acquisitions  of  learning,  what 
wide  and  delightful  survey  of  the  field  of  life  and  of  letters, 
are  to  be  found  in  his  essays  on  Shakespeare,  on  Dante,  on 
Dryden,  and  on  many  another  poet  or  prose  writer.  The 
abimdance  of  his  resources  as  critic  in  the  highest  sense 
have  never  been  surpassed,  at  least  in  English  literature. 

But  considerable  portions  of  the  earlier  as  well  as  of  the 
later  lectures  remain  imprinted,  partly,  no  doubt,  because 
his  points  of  view  changed  with  the  growth  of  his  learning, 
and  the  increasing  depth  as  well  as  breadth  of  his  vision. 
There  is  but  little  in  manuscript  which  he  would  himself,  I 
believe,  have  been  inclined  to  print  without  substantial 
change.  Yet  these  unprinted  remains  contain  so  much  that 
seems  to  me  to  possess  permanent  value  that,  after  some 
question  and  hesitation,  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
selections  from  them  should  be  published.  The  fragments 
must  be  read  with  the  fact  constantly  held  in  mind  that 
they  do  not  always  represent  Lowell's  matiu:e  opinions; 

[      34      1 


HUMOK,  WIT,  FUN,  AND  SATIRE 

that,  in  some  instances,  they  give  but  the  first  form  of 
thoughts  developed  in  other  connections  in  one  or  other  of 
his  later  essays;  that  they  have  not  received  his  last  revi- 
sion; that  they  have  the  form  of  discourse  addressed  to  the 
ear,  rather  than  that  of  literary  work  finished  for  the  eye. 
If  so  read,  I  trust  that  the  reader,  while  he  may  find  little 
in  them  to  increase  Lowell's  well-established  reputation, 
may  find  much  in  them  to  confirm  a  high  estimate  of  his 
position  as  one  of  the  rare  masters  of  English  prose  as  well 
as  one  of  the  most  capable  of  critics;  much  to  interest  him 
alike  in  their  intrinsic  character,  and  in  their  illustration  of 
the  life  and  thought  of  the  writer;  and  much  to  make  him 
feel  a  keen  regret  that  they  are  the  final  contributions  of 
their  author  to  the  treasures  of  English  literature. 

Charles  Eliot  Norton 

HiPPEL,  the  German  satirist,  divides  the  life  of  man 
into  five  periods,  according  to  the  ruling  desires 
which  successively  displace  each  other  in  the  human 
soul.  Our  first  longing,  he  says,  is  for  trousers,  the 
second  for  a  watch,  the  third  for  an  angel  in  pink 
muslin,  the  fourth  for  money,  and  the  fifth  for  a 
"place"  in  the  country.  I  think  he  has  overlooked 
one,  which  I  should  be  inclined  to  place  second  in 
point  of  time  —  the  ambition  to  escape  the  gregarious 
nursery,  and  to  be  master  of  a  chamber  to  one's  self. 
How  charming  is  the  memory  of  that  cloistered 
freedom,  of  that  independence,  wide  as  desire,  though, 
perhaps,  only  ten  feet  by  twelve !  How  much  of  future 
tastes  and  powers  lay  in  embryo  there  in  that  small 
chamber!  It  is  the  egg  of  the  coming  life.  There  the 
young  sailor  pores  over  the  "Narratives  of  Remark- 
l     35     1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

able  Shipwrecks,"  his  longing  heightened  as  the 
storm  roars  on  the  roof,  or  blows  its  trumpet  in  the 
chimney.  There  the  unfledged  naturalist  gathers  his 
menagerie,  and  empties  his  pockets  of  bugs  and 
turtles  that  awaken  the  ignorant  animosity  of  the 
housemaid.  There  the  commencing  chemist  re- 
hearses the  experiment  of  Schwarz,  and  singes  off 
those  eyebrows  which  shall  some  day  feel  the  cool 
shadow  of  the  discoverer's  laurel.  There  the  anti- 
quary begins  his  collections  with  a  bullet  from 
Bunker  Hill,  as  genuine  as  the  epistles  of  Phalaris,  or 
a  button  from  the  coat-tail  of  Columbus,  late  the 
property  of  a  neighboring  scarecrow,  and  sold  to  him 
by  a  schoolmate,  who  thus  lays  the  foundation  of 
that  colossal  fortune  which  is  to  make  his  children 
the  ornaments  of  society.  There  the  potential  Dibdin 
or  Dowse  gathers  his  library  on  a  single  pendulous 
shelf  —  more  fair  to  him  than  the  hanging  gardens 
of  Babylon.  There  stand  "Robinson  Crusoe,"  and 
"Gulliver,"  perhaps  "Gil  Bias,"  Goldsmith's  His- 
tories of  Greece  and  Rome,  "Original  Poems  for 
Infant  Minds,"  the  "Parent's  Assistant,"  and  (for 
Sundays)  the  "Shepherd  of  Salisbury  Plain,"  with 
other  narratives  of  the  excellent  Mrs.  Hannah  More 
too  much  neglected  in  maturer  life.  With  these  are 
admitted  also  "  Viri  Romse,"  Nepos,  Florus,  Phsedrus, 
and  even  the  Latin  grammar,  because  they  count, 
playing  here  upon  these  mimic  boards  the  silent 
[     36      ] 


HUMOR,  WIT,  FUN,  AND  SATIRE 

but  awful  part  of  second  and  third  conspirators, 
a  role  in  after  years  assumed  by  statelier  and  more 
celebrated  volumes  —  the  "books  without  which  no 
gentleman's  library  can  be  complete." 

I  remember  (for  I  must  call  my  memory  back  from 
this  garrulous  rookery  of  the  past  to  some  perch 
nearer  the  matter  in  hand)  that  when  I  was  first  in- 
stalled lord  of  such  a  manor,  and  found  myself  the 
Crusoe  of  that  remote  attic-island,  which  for  near 
thirty  years  was  to  be  my  unmolested  hermitage,  I 
cast  about  for  works  of  art  with  which  to  adorn  it. 
The  garret,  that  El  Dorado  of  boys,  supplied  me 
with  some  prints  which  had  once  been  the  chief  orna- 
ment of  my  great-grandfather's  study,  but  which 
the  growth  of  taste  or  luxury  had  banished  from 
story  to  story  till  they  had  arrived  where  malice 
could  pursue  them  no  farther.  These  were  heads  of 
ancient  worthies  ^  —  Plato,  Pythagoras,  Socrates, 
Seneca,  and  Cicero,  whom,  from  a  prejudice  acquired 
at  school,  I  shortly  banished  again  with  a  quousque 
tandem !  Besides  those  I  have  mentioned,  there  were 
Democritus  and  Heraclitus,  which  last,  in  those  days 
less  the  slave  of  tradition,  I  called  Heraclitus  —  an 
error  which  my  excellent  schoolmaster  (I  thank  him 
for  it)  would  have  expelled  from  my  head  by  the 
judicious  application  of  a  counter-irritant;  for  he 

*  Some  readers  may  recall  the  reference  to  these  "heads  of  an- 
cient wise  men  "  in  "  An  Interview  with  Miles  Standish."  —  C.  E.  N. 

[      37      ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

regarded  the  birth  as  a  kind  of  usher  to  the  laurel,  as 
indeed  the  true  tree  of  knowledge,  whose  advantages 
could  Adam  have  enjoyed  during  early  life,  he  had 
known  better  than  to  have  yielded  to  the  temptation 
of  any  other. 

Well,  over  my  chimney  hung  those  two  antitheti- 
cal philosophers  —  the  one  showing  his  teeth  in  an 
eternal  laugh,  while  the  tears  on  the  cheek  of  the 
other  forever  ran,  and  yet,  like  the  leaves  on  Keats's 
Grecian  urn,  could  never  be  shed.  I  used  to  wonder 
at  them  sometimes,  believing,  as  I  did  firmly,  that  to 
weep  and  laugh  had  been  respectively  the  sole  busi- 
ness of  their  lives.  I  was  puzzled  to  think  which  had 
the  harder  time  of  it,  and  whether  it  were  more  pain- 
ful to  be  under  contract  for  the  delivery  of  so  many 
tears  'per  diem,  or  to  compel  that  avi^piO/xov  yeXao-fjca.^ 
I  confess,  I  pitied  them  both;  for  if  it  be  diflScult  to 
produce  on  demand  what  Laura  Matilda  would  call 
the  "tender  dew  of  sympathy,"  he  is  also  deserving 
of  compassion  who  is  expected  to  be  funny  whether 
he  will  or  no.  As  I  grew  older,  and  learned  to  look 
on  the  two  heads  as  types,  they  gave  rise  to  many 
reflections,  raising  a  question  perhaps  impossible 
to  solve:  whether  the  vices  and  follies  of  men  were 
to  be  washed  away,  or  exploded  by  a  broadside  of 
honest  laughter.  I  believe  it  is  Southwell  who  says 
that  Mary  Magdalene  went  to  Heaven  by  water, 

*  Countless  —  i.e.,  perpetual  —  smile. 
I     38     1 


HUMOR,  WIT,  FUN,  AND  SATIRE 

and  it  is  certain  that  the  tears  that  people  shed 
for  themselves  are  apt  to  be  sincere;  but  I  doubt 
whether  we  are  to  be  saved  by  any  amount  of  vi- 
carious salt  water,  and,  though  the  philosophers 
should  weep  us  into  another  Noah's  flood,  yet  com- 
monly men  have  lumber  enough  of  self-conceit  to 
build  a  raft  of,  and  can  subsist  a  good  while  on 
that  beautiful  charity  for  their  own  weaknesses  in 
which  the  nerves  of  conscience  are  embedded  and 
cushioned,  as  in  similar  physical  straits  they  can 
upon  their  fat. 

On  the  other  hand,  man  has  a  wholesome  dread  of 
laughter,  as  he  is  the  only  animal  capable  of  that 
phenomenon  —  for  the  laugh  of  the  hyena  is  pro- 
nounced by  those  who  have  heard  it  to  be  no  joke, 
and  to  be  classed  with  those  <ye\a(Tfiara  ayeXaa-ra 
which  are  said  to  come  from  the  other  side  of  the 
mouth.  Whether,  as  Shaftesbury  will  have  it,  ridicule 
be  absolutely  the  test  of  truth  or  no,  we  may  admit 
it  to  be  relatively  so,  inasmuch  as  by  the  reductio  ad 
absurdum  it  often  shows  that  abstract  truth  may 
become  falsehood,  if  applied  to  the  practical  affairs 
of  life,  because  its  relation  to  other  truths  equally 
important,  or  to  human  nature,  has  been  overlooked. 
For  men  approach  truth  from  the  circumference, 
and,  acquiring  a  knowledge  at  most  of  one  or  two 
points  of  that  circle  of  which  God  is  the  centre,  are 
apt  to  assume  that  the  fixed  point  from  which  it 
[     39     1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

is  described  is  that  where  they  stand.  Moreover, 
"Ridentem  dicere  verum,  quid  vetat?" 

I  side  rather  with  your  merry  fellow  than  with 
Dr.  Young  when  he  says : 

Laughter,  though  never  censured  yet  as  sin, 


Is  half  immoral,  be  it  much  indulged; 
By  venting  spleen,  or  dissipating  thought. 
It  shows  a  scorner,  or  it  makes  a  fool; 
And  sins,  as  hurting  others  or  ourselves. 

Yet  would'st  thou  laugh  (but  at  thine  own  expense), 
This  counsel  strange  should  I  presume  to  give  — 
"Retire,  and  read  thy  Bible,  to  be  gay." 

With  shame  I  confess  it.  Dr.  Young's  "Night 
Thoughts"  have  given  me  as  many  hearty  laughs 
as  any  humorous  book  I  ever  read. 

Men  of  one  idea,  —  that  is,  who  have  one  idea  at 
a  time,  —  men  who  accomplish  great  results,  men 
of  action,  reformers,  saints,  martyrs,  are  inevitably 
destitute  of  humor;  and  if  the  idea  that  inspires  them 
be  great  and  noble,  they  are  impervious  to  it.  But 
through  the  perversity  of  human  affairs  it  not  in- 
frequently happens  that  men  are  possessed  by  a 
single  idea,  and  that  a  small  and  rickety  one  —  some 
seven  months'  child  of  thought  —  that  maintains  a 
querulous  struggle  for  life,  sometimes  to  the  dis- 
quieting of  a  whole  neighborhood.  These  last  com- 
monly need  no  satirist,  but,  to  use  a  common  phrase, 
make  themselves  absurd,  as  if  Nature  intended  them 
[     40     ] 


HUMOR,  WIT,  FUN,  AND  SATIRE 

for  parodies  on  some  of  her  graver  productions.  For 
example,  how  could  the  attempt  to  make  application 
of  mystical  prophecy  to  current  events  be  rendered 
more  ridiculous  than  when  we  read  that  two  hundred 
years  ago  it  was  a  leading  point  in  the  teaching  of 
Lodowick  Muggleton,  a  noted  heresiarch,  "that  one 
John  Robins  was  the  last  great  antichrist  and  son 
of  perdition  spoken  of  by  the  Apostle  in  Thessa- 
lonians "  ?  I  remember  also  an  eloquent  and  dis- 
tinguished person  who,  beginning  with  the  axiom 
that  all  the  disorders  of  this  microcosm,  the  body, 
had  their  origin  in  diseases  of  the  soul,  carried  his 
doctrine  to  the  extent  of  affirming  that  all  derange- 
ments oi  the  macrocosm  likewise  were  due  to  the 
same  cause.  Hearing  him  discourse,  you  would  have 
been  well-nigh  persuaded  that  you  had  a  kind  of 
complicity  in  the  spots  upon  the  sun,  had  he  not 
one  day  condensed  his  doctrine  into  an  epigram 
which  made  it  instantly  ludicrous.  "I  consider  my- 
self," exclaimed  he,  "personally  responsible  for  the 
obliquity  of  the  earth's  axis."  A  prominent  Come- 
outer  once  told  me,  with  a  look  of  indescribable  sat- 
isfaction, that  he  had  just  been  kicked  out  of  a 
Quaker  meeting.  "  I  have  had,"  he  said,  "  Calvinistic 
kicks  and  Unitarian  kicks.  Congregational,  Presby- 
terian, and  Episcopalian  kicks,  but  I  never  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  a  Quaker  kick  before."  Could  the 
fanaticism  of  the  collectors  of  worthless  rarities  be 
[     41     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

more  admirably  caricatured  than  thus  unconsciously 
by  our  passive  enthusiast? 

I  think  no  one  can  go  through  a  museum  of  natural 
curiosities,  or  see  certain  animals,  without  a  feeling 
that  Nature  herself  has  a  sense  of  the  comic.  There 
are  some  donkeys  that  one  can  scarce  look  at  with- 
out laughing  (perhaps  on  Cicero's  principle  of  the 
haruspex  haruspicem)  and  feeling  inclined  to  say, 
"My  good  fellow,  if  you  will  keep  my  secret  I  will 
keep  yours."  In  human  nature,  the  sense  of  the 
comic  seems  to  be  implanted  to  keep  man  sane,  and 
preserve  a  healthy  balance  between  body  and  soul. 
But  for  this,  the  sorcerer  Imagination  or  the  witch 
Enthusiasm  would  lead  us  an  endless  dance. 

The  advantage  of  the  humorist  is  that  he  cannot 
be  a  man  of  one  idea  —  for  the  essence  of  humor  lies 
in  the  contrast  of  two.  He  is  the  universal  disen- 
chanter.  He  makes  himself  quite  as  much  the  subject 
of  ironical  study  as  his  neighbor.  Is  he  inclined  to 
fancy  himself  a  great  poet,  or  an  original  thinker,  he 
remembers  the  man  who  dared  not  sit  down  because 
a  certain  part  of  him  was  made  of  glass,  and  muses 
smilingly,  "There  are  many  forms  of  hypochondria." 
This  duality  in  his  mind  which  constitutes  his  in- 
tellectual advantage  is  the  defect  of  his  character. 
He  is  futile  in  action  because  in  every  path  he  is 
confronted  by  the  horns  of  an  eternal  dilemma,  and 
is  apt  to  come  to  the  conclusion  that  nothing  is  very 
[     42     ] 


HUMOR,  WIT,  FUlf,  AND  SATIRE 

much  worth  the  while.  If  he  be  independent  of  ex- 
ertion, his  life  commonly  runs  to  waste.  If  he  turn 
author,  it  is  commonly  from  necessity;  Fielding 
wrote  for  money,  and  "Don  Quixote"  was  the  fruit 
of  a  debtors'  prison. 

It  seems  to  be  an  instinct  of  human  nature  to 
analyze,  to  define,  and  to  classify.  We  like  to  have 
things  conveniently  labelled  and  laid  away  in  the 
mind,  and  feel  as  if  we  knew  them  better  when  we 
have  named  them.  And  so  to  a  certain  extent  we  do. 
The  mere  naming  of  things  by  their  appearance  is 
science;  the  knowing  them  by  their  qualities  is  wis- 
dom; and  the  being  able  to  express  them  by  some 
intense  phrase  which  combines  appearance  and  qual- 
ity as  they  affect  the  imagination  through  the  senses 
by  impression,  is  poetry.  A  great  part  of  criticism  is 
scientific,  but  as  the  laws  of  art  are  only  echoes  of 
the  laws  of  nature,  it  is  possible  in  this  direction  also 
to  arrive  at  real  knowledge,  or,  if  not  so  far  as 
that,  at  some  kind  of  classification  that  may  help 
us  toward  that  excellent  property  —  compactness  of 
mind. 

Addison  has  given  the  pedigree  of  humor:  the 
union  of  truth  and  goodness  produces  wit;  that  of 
wit  with  wrath  produces  humor.  We  should  say  that 
this  was  rather  a  pedigree  of  satire.  For  what  trace 
of  wrath  is  there  in  the  humor  of  Chaucer,  Shake- 
speare, Rabelais,  Cervantes,  Sterne,  Fielding,  or 
[     43     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

Thackeray?  The  absence  of  wrath  is  the  character- 
istic of  all  of  them.  Ben  Jonson  says  that 

When  some  one  peculiar  quality 
Doth  so  possess  a  man  that  it  doth  draw 
All  his  afifects,  his  spirits,  and  his  powers 
In  their  constructions  all  to  rim  one  way. 
This  may  be  truly  said  to  be  a  humor. 

But  this,  again,  is  the  definition  of  a  humorous  char- 
acter, —  of  a  good  subject  for  the  humorist,  —  such 
as  Don  Quixote,  for  example. 

Humor  —  taken  in  the  sense  of  the  faculty  to 
perceive  what  is  humorous,  and  to  give  it  expression 
—  seems  to  be  greatly  a  matter  of  temperament. 
Hence,  probably,  its  name.  It  is  something  quite  in- 
definable, dififused  through  the  whole  nature  of  the 
man;  so  that  it  is  related  of  the  great  comic  actors 
that  the  audience  begin  to  laugh  as  soon  as  they 
show  their  faces,  or  before  they  have  spoken  a  word. 

The  sense  of  the  humorous  is  certainly  closely 
allied  with  the  understanding,  and  no  race  has  shown 
so  much  of  it  on  the  whole  as  the  English,  and  next 
to  them  the  Spanish  —  both  inclined  to  gravity.  Let 
us  not  be  ashamed  to  confess  that,  if  we  find  the 
tragedy  a  bore,  we  take  the  profoundest  satisfaction 
in  the  farce.  It  is  a  mark  of  sanity.  Humor,  in  its 
highest  level,  is  the  sense  of  comic  contradiction 
which  arises  from  the  perpetual  comment  which  the 
understanding  makes  upon  the  impressions  received 
[     44     ] 


HUMOR,  WIT,  FUN,  AND  SATIRE 

through  the  imagination.  Richter,  himself,  a  great 
humorist,  defines  it  thus: 

Humor  is  the  sublime  reversed;  it'briags  down  the  great 
in  order  to  set  the  little  beside  it,  and  elevates  the  little  in 
order  to  set  it  beside  the  great  —  that  it  may  annihilate 
both,  because  in  the  presence  of  the  infinite  all  are  alike 
nothing.  Only  the  universal,  only  totality,  moves  its  deep- 
est spring,  and  from  this  universality,  the  leading  compo- 
nent of  Humor,  arise  the  mildness  and  forbearance  of  the 
humorist  toward  the  individual,  who  is  lost  in  the  mass  of 
little  consequence;  this  also  distinguishes  the  Humorist 
from  the  Scoffer. 

We  find  it  very  natural  accordingly  to  speak  of  the 
breadth  of  humor,  while  wit  is,  by  the  necessity  of 
its  being,  as  narrow  as  a  flash  of  lightning,  and  as 
sudden.  Humor  may  pervade  a  whole  page  without 
our  being  able  to  put  our  finger  on  any  passage,  and 
say,  "It  is  here."  Wit  must  sparkle  and  snap  in  every 
line,  or  it  is  nothing.  When  the  wise  deacon  shook  his 
head,  and  said  that  "there  was  a  good  deal  of  human 
natur'  in  man,"  he  might  have  added  that  there  was 
a  good  deal  more  in  some  men  than  in  others.  Those 
who  have  the  largest  share  of  it  may  be  humorists, 
but  wit  demands  only  a  clear  and  nimble  intellect, 
presence  of  mind,  and  a  happy  faculty  of  expression. 
This  perfection  of  phrase,  this  neatness,  is  an  es- 
sential of  wit,  because  its  effect  must  be  instanta- 
neous ;  whereas  humor  is  often  diffuse  and  roundabout, 
and  its  impression  cumulative,  like  the  poison  of 
[     45     1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

arsenic.  As  Galiani  said  of  Nature  that  her  dice  were 
always  loaded,  so  the  wit  must  throw  sixes  every 
time.  And  what  the  same  Galiani  gave  as  a  definition 
of  sublime  oratory  may  be  applied  to  its  dexterity 
of  phrase:  "It  is  the  art  of  saying  everything  without 
being  clapt  in  the  Bastile,  in  a  country  where  it 
is  forbidden  to  say  anything."  Wit  must  also  have 
the  quality  of  unexpectedness.  "Sometimes,"  says 
Barrow,  "an  affected  simplicity,  sometimes  a  pre- 
sumptuous bluntness,  gives  it  being.  Sometimes  it 
rises  only  from  a  lucky  hitting  upon  what  is  strange, 
sometimes  from  a  crafty  wresting  of  obvious  matter 
to  the  purpose.  Often  it  consisteth  in  one  knows  not 
what,  and  springeth  up  one  can  hardly  tell  how.  Its 
ways  are  unaccountable  and  inexplicable,  being 
answerable  to  the  numberless  rovings  of  fancy  and 
windings  of  language." 

That  wit  does  not  consist  in  the  discovery  of  a 
merely  unexpected  likeness  or  even  contrast  in  word 
or  thought,  is  plain  if  we  look  at  what  is  called  a 
conceit,  which  has  all  the  qualities  of  wit  —  except 
wit.  For  example,  Warner,  a  contemporary  of  Shake- 
speare, wrote  a  long  poem  called  "Albion's  England," 
which  had  an  immense  contemporary  popularity, 
and  is  not  without  a  certain  value  still  to  the  stu- 
dent of  language.  In  this  I  find  a  perfect  specimen 
of  what  is  called  a  conceit.  Queen  Eleanor  strikes 
Fair  Rosamond,  and  Warner  says, 
I     46     ] 


HUMOR,  WIT,  FUN,  AND  SATIRE 

Hard  was  the  heart  that  gave  the  blow. 
Soft  were  those  lips  that  bled.^ 

This  is  bad  as  fancy  for  precisely  the  same  reason 
that  it  would  be  good  as  a  pun.  The  comparison  is 
imintentionally  wanting  in  logic,  just  as  a  pun  is 
intentionally  so.  To  make  the  contrast  what  it  should 
have  been,  —  to  make  it  coherent,  if  I  may  use  that 
term  of  a  contrast,  —  it  should  read: 

Hard  was  the  hand  that  gave  the  blow. 
Soft  were  those  lips  that  bled, 

for  otherwise  there  is  no  identity  of  meaning  in  the 
word  "hard"  as  apphed  to  the  two  nouns  it  quali- 
fies, and  accordingly  the  proper  logical  copula  is 
wanting.  Of  the  same  kind  is  the  conceit  which  be- 
longs, I  believe,  to  our  countryman  General  Morris: 

Her  heart  and  morning  broke  together 
In  tears, 

which  is  so  preposterous  that  had  it  been  intended 
for  fun  we  might  almost  have  laughed  at  it.  Here 
again  the  logic  is  unintentionally  violated  in  the 
word  broke,  and  the  sentence  becomes  absurd,  though 
not  funny.  Had  it  been  applied  to  a  merchant  ruined 
by  the  failure  of  the  United  States  Bank,  we  should 
at  once  see  the  ludicrousness  of  it,  though  here,  again, 
there  would  be  no  true  wit: 

^  This,  and  one  or  two  of  the  following  illustrations,  were  used 
again  by  Mr.  Lowell  in  his  "Shakespeare  Once  More":  Works 
(Riverside  edition),  ni,  53. 

[      47      ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

His  heart  and  Biddle  broke  together 
On  'change. 

Now  let  me  give  an  instance  of  true  fancy  from 
Butler,  the  author  of  "Hudibras,"  certainly  the 
greatest  wit  who  ever  wrote  English,  and  whose  wit 
is  so  profound,  so  purely  the  wit  of  thought,  that  we 
might  almost  rank  him  with  the  humorists,  but  that 
his  genius  was  cramped  with  a  contemporary,  and 
therefore  transitory,  subject.  Butler  says  of  loyalty 
that  it  is 

True  as  the  dial  to  the  sun 
Although  it  be  not  shined  upon. 

Now  what  is  the  difference  between  this  and  the 
examples  from  Warner  and  Morris  which  I  have  just 
quoted?  Simply  that  the  comparison  turning  upon 
the  word  true,  the  mind  is  satisfied,  because  the 
analogy  between  the  word  as  used  morally  and  as 
used  physically  is  so  perfect  as  to  leave  no  gap  for  the 
reasoning  faculty  to  jolt  over.  But  it  is  precisely  this 
jolt,  not  so  violent  as  to  be  displeasing,  violent 
enough  to  discompose  our  thoughts  with  an  agree- 
able sense  of  surprise,  which  it  is  the  object  of  a  pun 
to  give  us.  Wit  of  this  kind  treats  logic  with  every 
possible  outward  demonstration  of  respect  —  "keeps 
the  word  of  promise  to  the  ear,  and  breaks  it  to  the 
sense."  Dean  Swift's  famous  question  to  the  man 
carrying  the  hare,  "Pray,  sir,  is  that  your  own  hare 
or  a  wig?"  is  perfect  in  its  way.  Here  there  is  an 
[     48     1 


HUMOR,  WIT,  FUN,  AND  SATIRE 

absolute  identity  of  sound  with  an  equally  absolute 

and  therefore  ludicrous  disparity  of  meaning.  Hood 

abounds  in  examples  of  this  sort  of  fun  —  only  that 

his  analogies  are  of  a  more  subtle  and  perplexing 

kind.  In  his  elegy  on  the  old  sailor  he  says. 

His  head  was  turned,  and  so  he  chewed 
His  pigtail  till  he  died. 

This  is  inimitable,  like  all  the  best  of  Hood's  puns. 
To  the  ear  it  is  perfect,  but  so  soon  as  you  attempt  to 
realize  it  to  yourself,  the  mind  is  involved  in  an  in- 
extricable confusion  of  comical  non  sequiturs.  And 
yet  observe  the  gravity  with  which  the  forms  of 
reason  are  kept  up  in  the  "and  so."  Like  this  is  the 
peddler's  recommendation  of  his  ear-trumpet: 

I  don't  pretend  with  horns  of  mine. 

Like  some  in  the  advertising  line. 

To  magnify  sounds  on  such  marvellous  scales 

That  the  sounds  of  a  cod  seem  as  large  as  a  whale's. 

There  was  Mrs.  F.  so  very  deaf 

That  she  might  have  worn  a  percussion  cap 

And  been  knocked  on  the  head  without  hearing  it  snap. 

Well,  I  sold  her  a  horn,  and  the  very  next  day 

She  heard  from  her  husband  in  Botany  Bay. 

Again,  his  definition  of  deafness : 

Deaf  as  the  dog's  ears  in  Enfield's  "Speaker." 

So,  in  his  description  of  the  hardships  of  the  wild 
beasts  in  the  menagerie. 

Who  could  not  even  prey 
In  their  own  way, 

[      49      ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

and  the  monkey-reformer  who  resolved  to  set  them 
all  free,  beginning  with  the  Uon;  but 

Pug  had  only  half  unbolted  Nero^ 
When  Nero  bolted  him. 

In  Hood  there  is  almost  always  a  combination  of  wit 
and  f mi,  the  wit  always  suggesting  the  remote  asso- 
ciation of  ideas,  and  the  fun  jostling  together  the 
most  obvious  concords  of  sound  and  discords  of  sense. 
Hood's  use  of  words  reminds  one  of  the  kaleidoscope. 
Throw  them  down  in  a  heap,  and  they  are  the  most 
confused  jumble  of  unrelated  bits;  but  once  in  the 
magical  tube  of  his  fancy,  and,  with  a  shake  and  a 
turn,  they  assume  figures  that  have  the  absolute  per- 
fection of  geometry.  In  the  droll  complaint  of  the 
lover. 

Perhaps  it  was  right  to  dissemble  your  love. 
But  why  did  you  kick  me  down-stairs? 

the  self -sparing  charity  of  phrase  that  could  stretch 
the  meaning  of  the  word  "dissemble"  so  as  to  make 
it  cover  so  violent  a  process  as  kicking  downstairs 
has  the  true  zest,  the  tang,  of  contradiction  and  sur- 
prise. Hood,  not  content  with  such  a  play  upon  ideas, 
would  bewitch  the  whole  sentence  with  plays  upon 
words  also.  His  fancy  has  the  enchantment  of  Huon's 
horn,  and  sets  the  gravest  conceptions  a-capering  in 
a  way  that  makes  us  laugh  in  spite  of  ourselves. 

Andrew  Marvell's  satire  upon  the  Dutch  is  a 
capital  instance  of  wit  as  distinguished  from  fun.  It 
[     50     ] 


HUMOR,  WIT,  FUN,  AND  SATIRE 

rather  exercises  than  tickles  the  mind,  so  full  is  it  of 
quaint  fancy: 

Holland,  that  scarce  deserves  the  name  of  land. 

As  but  the  offscouring  of  the  British  sand. 

And  so  much  earth  as  was  contributed 

By  English  pilots  when  they  heaved  the  lead. 

Or  what  by  ocean's  slow  alluvium  fell 

Of  shipwrecked  cockle  and  the  muscle-shell; 

This  indigestful  vomit  of  the  sea 

Fell  to  the  Dutch  by  just  propriety. 

Glad,  then,  as  miners  who  have  found  the  ore 
They,  with  mad  labor,  fished  their  land  to  shore. 
And  dived  as  desperately  for  each  piece 
Of  earth  as  if  't  had  been  of  ambergreese 
Collecting  anxiously  small  loads  of  clay. 
Less  than  what  building  swallows  bear  away. 
Or  than  those  pills  which  sordid  beetles  roll. 
Transfusing  into  them  their  sordid  soul. 

How  did  they  rivet  with  gigantic  piles 
Thorough  the  centre  their  new-catched  miles. 
And  to  the  stake  a  struggling  country  bound. 
Where  barking  waves  still  bait  the  forced  ground! 

Yet  still  his  claim  the  injured  ocean  laid. 
And  oft  at  leap-frog  o'er  their  steeples  played. 
As  if  on  purpose  it  on  land  had  come 
To  show  them  what 's  their  mare  liberum; 
The  fish  ofttimes  the  burgher  dispossessed. 
And  sate,  not  as  a  meat,  but  as  a  guest; 
And  oft  the  Tritons  and  the  sea-nymphs  tan 
Whole  shoals  of  Dutch  served  up  as  Caliban, 
And,  as  they  over  the  new  level  ranged. 
For  pickled  herring  pickled  Heeren  changed. 
Therefore  necessity,  that  first  made  kings. 
Something  like  government  among  them  brings; 

[      51      ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

And  as  among  the  blind  the  blinkard  reigns 
So  rules  among  the  drowned  he  that  drains; 
Who  best  could  know  to  pump  on  earth  a  leak. 
Him  they  their  lord  and  Country's  Father  speak. 
To  make  a  bank  was  a  great  plot  of  state. 
Invent  a  shovel  and  be  a  magistrate; 
Hence  some  small  dykegrave,  unperceived,  invades 
The  power,  and  grows,  as  't  were,  a  king  of  spades. 

I  have  cited  this  long  passage  not  only  because 

Marvell  (both  in  his  serious  and  comic  verse)  is  a 

great  favorite  of  mine,  but  because  it  is  as  good  an 

illustration  as  I  know  how  to  find  of  that  fancy  flying 

off  into  extravagance,  and  that  nice  compactness  of 

expression,  that  constitute  genuine  wit.  On  the  other 

hand,  Smollett  is  only  funny,  hardly  witty,  where  he 

condenses  all  his  wrath  against  the  Dutch  into  an 

epigram  of  two  lines: 

Amphibious  creatures,  sudden  be  your  fall. 
May  man  undam  you  and  God  damn  you  all. 

Of  satirists  I  have  hitherto  said  nothing,  because 
some,  perhaps  the  most  eminent  of  them,  do  not  come 
under  the  head  either  of  wit  or  humor.  With  them, 
as  Juvenal  said  of  himself,  "facit  indignatio  versus," 
and  wrath  is  the  element,  as  a  general  rule,  neither 
of  wit  nor  humor.  Swift,  in  the  epitaph  he  wrote  for 
himself,  speaks  of  the  grave  as  a  place  "ubi  saeva 
indignatio  cor  ulterius  lacerare  nequeat,"  and  this 
hints  at  the  sadness  which  makes  the  ground  of  all 
humor.  There  is  certainly  humor  in  "Gulliver,"  es- 
pecially in  the  chapters  about  the  Yahoos,  where  the 
[     52     ] 


HUMOK,  WIT,  FUN,  AND  SATIRE 

horses  are  represented  as  the  superior  beings,  and 
disgusted  at  the  filthiness  of  the  creatures  in  human 
shape.  But  commonly  Swift,  too,  must  be  ranked 
with  the  wits,  if  we  measure  him  rather  by  what 
he  wrote  than  by  what  he  was.  Take  this  for  an 
example  from  the  "Day  of  Judgment": 

With  a  whirl  of  thought  oppressed 
I  sank  from  reverie  to  rest, 
A  horrid  vision  seized  my  head, 
I  saw  the  graves  give  up  their  dead! 
Jove,  armed  with  terrors,  burst  the  skies, 
And  thunder  roars,  and  lightning  flies! 
Amazed,  confused,  its  fate  unknown. 
The  world  stands  trembling  at  his  throne! 
While  each  pale  sinner  hung  his  head, 
Jove,  nodding,  shook  the  heavens,  and  said: 
"Offending  race  of  himian  kind; 
By  nature,  reason,  learning,  blind. 
You  who  through  frailty  stepped  aside. 
And  you  who  never  fell  through  pride. 
You  who  in  different  sects  were  shammed. 
And  come  to  see  each  other  damned 
(So  some  folks  told  you  —  but  they  knew 
No  more  of  Jove's  designs  than  you)  — 
The  world's  mad  business  now  is  o'er. 
And  I  resent  these  pranks  no  more  — 
I  to  such  blockheads  set  my  wit! 
I  damn  such  fools!  Go,  go!  you're  bit!  " 

The  unexpectedness  of  the  conclusion  here,  after 
the  somewhat  solemn  preface,  is  entirely  of  the 
essence  of  wit.  So,  too,  is  the  sudden  flirt  of  the 
scorpion's  tail  to  sting  you.  It  is  almost  the  opposite 
of  humor  in  one  respect  —  namely,  that  it  would 
[     53      1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

make  us  think  the  solemnest  things  in  life  were  sham, 
whereas  it  is  the  sham-solemn  ones  which  humor  de- 
lights in  exposing.  This  further  difference  is  also  true: 
that  wit  makes  you  laugh  once,  and  loses  some  of  its 
comicality  (though  none  of  its  point)  with  every  new 
reading,  while  humor  grows  droller  and  droller  the 
oftener  we  read  it.  If  we  cannot  safely  deny  that 
Swift  was  a  humorist,  we  may  at  least  say  that  he 
was  one  in  whom  humor  had  gone  through  the  stage 
of  acetous  fermentation  and  become  rancid.  We 
should  never  forget  that  he  died  mad.  Satirists  of 
this  kind,  while  they  have  this  quality  of  true  humor, 
that  they  contrast  a  higher  with  a  lower,  differ  from 
their  nobler  brethren  inasmuch  as  their  comparison 
is  always  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  higher.  They 
purposely  disenchant  us  —  while  the  others  rather 
show  us  how  sad  a  thing  it  is  to  be  disenchanted 
at  all. 

Ben  Jonson,  who  had  in  respect  of  sturdy  good 
sense  very  much  the  same  sort  of  mind  as  his  name- 
sake Samuel,  and  whose  "Discoveries,"  as  he  calls 
them,  are  well  worth  reading  for  the  sound  criticism 
they  contain,  says: 

The  parts  of  a  comedy  are  the  same  with  [those  of]  a 
tragedy,  and  the  end  is  partly  the  same;  for  they  both  de- 
light and  teach:  the  comics  are  called  didaskaloi  ^  of  the 
Greeks,  no  less  than  the  tragics.  Nor  is  the  moving  of 

^  Teachers. 
[     54     1 


HUMOR,  WIT,  FUX,  AND  SATIRE 

laughter  always  the  end  of  comedy;  that  is  rather  a  fowling 
for  the  people's  delight,  or  their  fooling.  For,  as  Aristotle 
says  rightly,  the  moving  of  laughter  is  a  fault  in  comedy,  a 
kind  of  turpitude  that  depraves  some  part  of  a  man's  na- 
ture without  a  disease.  As  a  wry  face  moves  laughter,  or  a 
deformed  vizard,  or  a  rude  clown  dressed  in  a  lady's  habit 
and  using  her  actions;  we  dislike  and  scorn  such  represen- 
tations, which  made  the  ancient  philosophers  ever  think 
laughter  unfitting  in  a  wise  man.  So  that  what  either  in  the 
words  or  sense  of  an  author,  or  in  the  language  and  actions 
of  men,  is  awry  or  depraved,  does  strongly  stir  mean  affec- 
tions, and  provoke  for  the  most  part  to  laughter.  And  there- 
fore it  was  clear  that  all  insolent  and  obscene  speeches,  jests 
upon  the  best  men,  injuries  to  particular  persons,  perverse 
and  sinister  sayings  (and  the  rather,  unexpected)  in  the  old 
comedy  did  move  laughter,  especially  where  it  did  imitate 
any  dishonesty,  and  scurrility  came  forth  in  the  place  of 
wit;  which,  who  understands  the  nature  and  genius  of 
laughter  cannot  but  perfectly  know. 

He  then  goes  on  to  say  of  Aristophanes  that 

he  expressed  all  the  moods  and  figures  of  what  was  ridicu- 
lous, oddly.  In  short,  as  vinegar  is  not  accounted  good  till 
the  wine  be  corrupted,  so  jests  that  are  true  and  natural 
seldom  raise  laughter  with  that  beast  the  multitude.  They 
love  nothing  that  is  right  and  proper.  The  farther  it  runs 
from  reason  or  p>ossibility,  with  them  the  better  it  is. 

In  the  latter  part  of  this  it  is  evident  that  Ben  is 
speaking  with  a  little  bitterness.  His  own  comedies 
are  too  rigidly  constructed  according  to  Aristotle's 
dictum,  that  the  moving  of  laughter  was  a  fault 
in  comedy.  I  like  the  passage  as  an  illustration  of  a 
fact  undeniably  true,  that  Shakespeare's  humor  was 
I      55     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

altogether  a  new  thing  upon  the  stage,  and  also  as 
showmg  that  satirists  (for  such  were  also  the  writers 
of  comedy)  were  looked  upon  rather  as  censors  and 
moralists  than  as  movers  of  laughter.  Dante,  accord- 
ingly, himself  in  this  sense  the  greatest  of  satirists, 
in  putting  Horace  among  the  five  great  poets  in 
limbo,  qualifies  him  with  the  title  of  satiro. 

But  if  we  exclude  the  satirists,  what  are  we  to  do 
with  Aristophanes?  Was  he  not  a  satirist,  and  in 
some  sort  also  a  censor?  Yes;  but,  as  it  appears  to 
me,  of  a  different  kind,  as  well  as  in  a  different  degree, 
from  any  other  ancient.  I  think  it  is  plain  that  he 
wrote  his  comedies  not  only  to  produce  certain  po- 
litical, moral,  and  even  literary  ends,  but  for  the  fun 
of  the  thing.  I  am  so  poor  a  Grecian  that  I  have  no 
doubt  I  miss  three  quarters  of  what  is  most  char- 
acteristic of  him.  But  even  through  the  fog  of  the 
Latin  on  the  opposite  page  I  can  make  out  more  or 
less  of  the  true  lineaments  of  the  man.  I  can  see  that 
he  was  a  master  of  language,  for  it  becomes  alive 
under  his  hands  —  puts  forth  buds  and  blossoms 
like  the  staff  of  Joseph,  as  it  does  always  when  it  feels 
the  hand  and  recognizes  the  touch  of  its  legitimate 
sovereigns.  Those  prodigious  combinations  of  his 
are  like  some  of  the  strange  polyps  we  hear  of  that 
seem  a  single  organism;  but  cut  them  into  as  many 
parts  as  you  please,  each  has  a  life  of  its  own  and 
stirs  with  independent  being.  There  is  nothing  that 
[     56     1 


HUMOR,  WIT,  FUN,  AND  SATIRE 

words  will  not  do  for  him;  no  service  seems  too  mean 
or  too  high.  And  then  his  abmidance !  He  puts  one  in 
mind  of  the  definition  of  a  competence  by  the  only 
man  I  ever  saw  who  had  the  true  flavor  of  Falstafif  in 
him  —  "a  million  a  minute  and  your  expenses  paid." 
As  Bums  said  of  himself,  "The  rhymes  come  skelpin, 
rank  and  file."  Now  they  are  as  graceful  and  sinuous 
as  water-nymphs,  and  now  they  come  tumbling  head 
over  heels,  throwing  somersaults,  like  clowns  in  the 
circus,  with  a  "Here  we  are!"  I  can  think  of  nothing 
like  it  but  Rabelais,  who  had  the  same  extraordinary 
gift  of  getting  all  the  go  out  of  words.  They  do  not 
merely  play  with  words;  they  romp  with  them,  tickle 
them,  tease  them,  and  somehow  the  words  seem  to 
like  it. 

I  dare  say  there  may  be  as  much  fancy  and  fun 
in  "The  Clouds"  or  "The  Birds,"  but  neither  of 
them  seems  so  rich  to  me  as  "The  Frogs,"  nor  does 
the  fun  anywhere  else  climb  so  high  or  dwell  so  long 
in  the  region  of  humor  as  here.  Lucian  makes  Greek 
mythology  comic,  to  be  sure,  but  he  has  nothing  like 
the  scene  in  "The  Frogs,"  where  Bacchus  is  terrified 
with  the  strange  outcries  of  a  procession  celebrating 
his  own  mysteries,  and  of  whose  dithyrambic  songs 
it  is  plain  he  can  make  neither  head  nor  tail.  Here 
is  humor  of  the  truest  metal,  and,  so  far  as  we  can 
guess,  the  first  example  of  it.  Here  is  the  true  humor- 
ous contrast  between  the  ideal  god  and  the  god  with 
[     57     1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

human  weaknesses  and  follies  as  he  had  been  de- 
graded in  the  popular  conception.  And  is  it  too  ab- 
surd to  be  within  the  limits  even  of  comic  proba- 
bility? Is  it  even  so  absurd  as  those  hand-mills  for 
grinding  out  so  many  prayers  a  minute  which  Hue 
and  Gabet  saw  in  Tartary? 

Cervantes  was  bom  on  October  9,  1547,  and  died 
on  April  23,  1616,  on  the  same  day  as  Shakespeare. 
He  is,  I  think,  beyond  all  question,  the  greatest  of 
humorists.  Whether  he  intended  it  or  not,  —  and  I 
am  inclined  to  believe  he  did,  —  he  has  typified  in 
Don  Quixote,  and  Sancho  Panza  his  esquire,  the  two 
component  parts  of  the  human  mind  and  shapers 
of  human  character  —  the  imagination  and  under- 
standing. There  is  a  great  deal  more  than  this;  for 
what  is  positive  and  intentional  in  a  truly  great  book 
is  often  little  in  comparison  with  what  is  accidental 
and  suggested.  The  plot  is  of  the  meagrest.  A  country 
gentleman  of  La  Mancha,  living  very  much  by  him- 
self, and  continually  feeding  his  fancy  with  the  ro- 
mances of  chivalry,  becomes  at  last  the  victim  of  a 
monomania  on  this  one  subject,  and  resolves  to  re- 
vive the  order  of  chivalry  in  his  own  proper  person. 
He  persuades  a  somewhat  prosaic  neighbor  of  his  to 
accompany  him  as  squire.  They  sally  forth,  and  meet 
with  various  adventures,  from  which  they  reap  no 
benefit  but  the  sad  experience  of  plentiful  rib-roast- 
ing. Now  if  this  were  all  of  "Don  Quixote,"  it  would 
[     58     ] 


HUMOR,  WIT,  FUN,  AND  SATIRE 

be  simply  broad  farce,  as  it  becomes  in  Butler's 
parody  of  it  in  Sir  Hudibras  and  Ralpho  so  far  as 
mere  external  characteristics  are  concerned.  The 
latter  knight  and  his  squire  are  the  most  glaring 
absurdities,  without  any  sufficient  reason  for  their 
being  at  all,  or  for  their  adventures,  except  that  they 
furnished  Butler  with  mouthpieces  for  his  own  wit 
and  wisdom.  They  represent  nothing,  and  are  in- 
tended to  represent  nothing. 

I  confess  that,  in  my  judgment,  Don  Quixote  is 
the  most  perfect  character  ever  drawn.  As  Sir  John 
Falstaff  is,  in  a  certain  sense,  always  a  gentleman,  — 
that  is,  as  he  is  guilty  of  no  crime  that  is  technically 
held  to  operate  in  defeasance  of  his  title  to  that 
name  as  a  man  of  the  world,  —  so  is  Don  Quixote,  in 
everything  that  does  not  concern  his  monomania,  a 
perfect  gentleman  and  a  good  Christian  besides.  He 
is  not  the  merely  technical  gentleman  of  three  de- 
scents —  but  the  true  gentleman,  such  a  gentleman 
as  only  purity,  disinterestedness,  generosity,  and  fear 
of  God  can  make.  And  with  what  consummate  skill 
are  the  boundaries  of  his  mania  drawn !  He  only  be- 
lieves in  enchantment  just  so  far  as  is  necessary  to 
account  to  Sancho  and  himself  for  the  ill  event  of  all 
his  exploits.  He  always  reasons  rightly,  as  madmen 
do,  from  his  own  premises.  And  this  is  the  reason  I 
object  to  Cervantes's  treatment  of  him  in  the  second 
part  —  which  followed  the  other  after  an  interval  of 
I     59     1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

nearly  eight  years.  For,  except  in  so  far  as  they  de- 
lude themselves,  monomaniacs  are  as  sane  as  other 
people,  and  besides  shocking  our  feelings,  the  tricks 
played  on  the  Don  at  the  Duke's  castle  are  so  trans- 
parent that  he  could  never  have  been  taken  in  by 
them. 

Don  Quixote  is  the  everlasting  type  of  the  disap- 
pointment which  sooner  or  later  always  overtakes 
the  man  who  attempts  to  accomplish  ideal  good  by 
material  means.  Sancho,  on  the  other  hand,  with  his 
proverbs,  is  the  type  of  the  man  with  common  sense. 
He  always  sees  things  in  the  daylight  of  reason.  He 
is  never  taken  in  by  his  master's  theory  of  enchant- 
ers, —  although  superstitious  enough  to  believe  such 
things  possible,  —  but  he  does  believe,  despite  all 
reverses,  in  his  promises  of  material  prosperity  and 
advancement.  The  island  that  has  been  promised  him 
always  floats  before  him  like  the  air-drawn  dagger 
before  Macbeth,  and  beckons  him  on.  The  whole 
character  is  exquisite.  And,  fitly  enough,  when  he 
at  last  becomes  governor  of  his  imaginary  island  of 
Barataria,  he  makes  an  excellent  magistrate  —  be- 
cause statesmanship  depends  for  its  success  so  much 
less  on  abstract  principle  than  on  precisely  that  tra- 
ditional wisdom  in  which  Sancho  was  rich. 


THE  FIVE  INDISPENSABLE  AUTHORS 

(HOMER,  DANTE,  CERVANTES,  GOETHE 
SHAKESPEARE) 

The  study  of  literature,  that  it  may  be  fruitful,  that 
it  may  not  result  in  a  mere  gathering  of  names  and 
dates  and  phrases,  must  be  a  study  of  ideas  and  not  of 
words,  of  periods  rather  than  of  men,  or  only  of  such 
men  as  are  great  enough  or  individual  enough  to  re- 
flect as  much  light  upon  their  age  as  they  in  turn  re- 
ceive from  it.  To  know  literature  as  the  elder  Disraeli 
knew  it  is  at  best  only  an  amusement,  an  accomplish- 
ment, great,  indeed,  for  the  dilettante,  but  valueless 
for  the  scholar.  Detached  facts  are  nothing  in  them- 
selves, and  become  of  worth  only  in  their  relation  to 
one  another.  It  is  little,  for  example,  to  know  the  date 
of  Shakespeare:  something  more  that  he  and  Cer- 
vantes were  contemporaries;  and  a  great  deal  that 
he  grew  up  in  a  time  fermenting  with  reformation 
in  Church  and  State,  when  the  intellectual  impulse 
from  the  invention  of  printing  had  scarcely  reached 
its  climax,  and  while  the  New  World  stung  the 
imaginations  of  men  with  its  immeasurable  promise 
and  its  temptations  to  daring  adventure.  Facts  in 
themselves  are  clumsy  and  cumbrous  —  the  cowry- 
currency  of  isolated  and  uninventive  men;  generali- 
zations, conveying  great  sums  of  knowledge  in  a  little 
[     61     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

space,  mark  the  epoch  of  free  interchange  of  ideas,  of 
higher  culture,  and  of  something  better  than  provin- 
cial scholarship. 

But  generalizations,  again,  though  in  themselves 
the  work  of  a  happier  moment,  of  some  genetic  flash 
in  the  brain  of  man,  gone  before  one  can  say  it 
lightens,  are  the  result  of  ideas  slowly  gathered  and 
long  steeped  and  clarified  in  the  mind,  each  in  itself 
a  composite  of  the  carefully  observed  relations  of 
separate  and  seemingly  disparate  facts.  What  is  the 
pedigree  of  almost  all  great  fortunes?  Through  vast 
combinations  of  trade,  forlorn  hopes  of  speculation, 
you  trace  them  up  to  a  clear  head  and  a  self -earned 
sixpence.  It  is  the  same  with  all  large  mental  accu- 
mulations: they  begin  with  a  steady  brain  and  the 
first  solid  result  of  thought,  however  small  —  the 
nucleus  of  speculation.  The  true  aim  of  the  scholar  is 
not  to  crowd  his  memory,  but  to  classify  and  sort  it, 
till  what  was  a  heap  of  chaotic  curiosities  becomes  a 
museum  of  science. 

It  may  well  be  questioned  whether  the  invention 
of  printing,  while  it  democratized  information,  has 
not  also  levelled  the  ancient  aristocracy  of  thought. 
By  putting  a  library  within  the  power  of  every  one, 
it  has  taught  men  to  depend  on  their  shelves  rather 
than  on  their  brains;  it  has  supplanted  a  strenuous 
habit  of  thinking  with  a  loose  indolence  of  reading 
which  relaxes  the  muscular  fiber  of  the  mind.  When 
[     62     1 


THE  FIVE  INDISPENSABLE  AUTHORS 

men  had  few  books,  they  mastered  those  few;  but 
now  the  multitude  of  books  lord  it  over  the  man. 
The  costliness  of  books  was  a  great  refiner  of  liter- 
ature. Men  disposed  of  single  volumes  by  will  with 
as  many  provisions  and  precautions  as  if  they  had 
been  great  landed  estates.  A  mitre  would  hardly  have 
overjoyed  Petrarch  as  much  as  did  the  finding  of  a 
copy  of  Virgil.  The  problem  for  the  scholar  was  for- 
merly how  to  acquire  books;  for  us  it  is  how  to  get 
rid  of  them.  Instead  of  gathering,  we  must  sift.  When 
Confucius  made  his  collection  of  Chinese  poems,  he 
saved  but  three  hundred  and  ten  out  of  more  than 
three  thousand,  and  it  has  consequently  survived 
until  our  day. 

In  certain  respects  the  years  do  our  weeding  for 
us.  In  our  youth  we  admire  the  verses  which  answer 
our  mood;  as  we  grow  older  we  like  those  better 
which  speak  to  our  experience;  at  last  we  come  to 
look  only  upon  that  as  poetry  which  appeals  to  that 
original  nature  in  us  which  is  deeper  than  all  moods 
and  wiser  than  all  experience.  Before  a  man  is  forty 
he  has  broken  many  idols,  and  the  milestones  of  his 
intellectual  progress  are  the  gravestones  of  dead  and 
buried  enthusiasms  of  his  dethroned  gods. 

There  are  certain  books  which  it  is  necessary  to 

read;  but  they  are  very  few.  Looking  at  the  matter 

from  an  aesthetic  point  of  view,  merely,  I  should  say 

that  thus  far  one  man  had  been  able  to  use  types  so 

[     63     1 


ON  POETRY  AKD  BELLES-LETTRES 

universal,  and  to  draw  figures  so  cosmopolitan,  that 
they  are  equally  true  in  all  languages  and  equally 
acceptable  to  the  whole  Indo-European  branch,  at 
least,  of  the  human  family.  That  man  is  Homer,  and 
there  needs,  it  seems  to  me,  no  further  proof  of  his 
individual  existence  than  this  very  fact  of  the  solitary 
unapproachableness  of  the  "Hiad"  and  the  "Odys- 
sey." The  more  wonderful  they  are,  the  more  likely 
to  be  the  work  of  one  person.  Nowhere  is  the  purely 
natural  man  presented  to  us  so  nobly  and  sincerely 
as  in  these  poems.  Not  far  below  these  I  should  place 
the  "Divina  Commedia"  of  Dante,  in  which  the  his- 
tory of  the  spiritual  man  is  sketched  with  equal  com- 
mand of  material  and  grandeur  of  outline.  Don 
Quixote  stands  upon  the  same  level,  and  receives  the 
same  universal  appreciation.  Here  we  have  the  spir- 
itual and  the  natural  man  set  before  us  in  humorous 
contrast.  In  the  knight  and  his  squire  Cervantes  has 
typified  the  two  opposing  poles  of  our  dual  nature  — 
the  imagination  and  the  understanding  as  they  ap- 
pear in  contradiction.  This  is  the  only  comprehensive 
satire  ever  written,  for  it  is  utterly  independent  of 
time,  place,  and  manners.  Faust  gives  us  the  natural 
history  of  the  human  intellect,  Mephistopheles  being 
merely  the  projected  impersonation  of  that  scepti- 
cism which  is  the  invariable  result  of  a  purely  in- 
tellectual culture.  These  four  books  are  the  only  ones 
in  which  universal  facts  of  human  nature  and  ex- 
[     64     1 


THE  FIVE  INDISPENSABLE  AUTHORS 

perience  are  ideally  represented.  They  can,  there- 
fore, never  be  displaced.  Whatever  moral  significance 
there  may  be  in  certain  episodes  of  the  "Odyssey," 
the  man  of  the  Homeric  poems  is  essentially  the  man 
of  the  senses  and  the  understanding,  to  whom  the 
other  world  is  alien  and  therefore  repulsive.  There  is 
nothing  that  demonstrates  this  more  clearly,  as  there 
is  nothing,  in  my  judgment,  more  touching  and  pic- 
turesque in  all  poetry,  than  that  passage  in  the 
eleventh  book  of  the  "Odyssey,"  where  the  shade  of 
Achilles  tells  Ulysses  that  he  would  rather  be  the 
poorest  shepherd-boy  on  a  Grecian  hill  than  king 
over  the  unsubstantial  shades  of  Hades.  Dante's 
poem,  on  the  other  hand,  sets  forth  the  passage  of 
man  from  the  world  of  sense  to  that  of  spirit;  in 
other  words,  his  moral  conversion.  It  is  Dante  re- 
lating his  experience  in  the  great  camp-meeting  of 
mankind,  but  relating  it,  by  virtue  of  his  genius,  so 
representatively  that  it  is  no  longer  the  story  of  one 
man,  but  of  all  men.  Then  comes  Cervantes,  showing 
the  perpetual  and  comic  contradiction  between  the 
spiritual  and  the  natural  man  in  actual  Hfe,  marking 
the  transition  from  the  age  of  the  imagination  to  that 
of  the  intellect;  and,  lastly,  Goethe,  the  poet  of  a 
period  in  which  a  purely  intellectual  culture  reached 
its  maximum  of  development,  depicts  its  one-sided- 
ness,  and  its  consequent  failure.  These  books,  then, 
are  not  national,  but  human,  and  record  certain 
[      65      ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

phases  of  man's  nature,  certain  stages  of  his  moral 
progress.  They  are  gospels  in  the  lay  bible  of  the 
race.  It  will  remain  for  the  future  poet  to  write  the 
epic  of  the  complete  man,  as  it  remains  for  the  future 
world  to  afford  the  example  of  his  entire  and  har- 
monious development. 

I  have  not  mentioned  Shakespeare,  because  his 
works  come  under  a  different  category.  Though  they 
mark  the  very  highest  level  of  human  genius,  they 
yet  represent  no  special  epoch  in  the  history  of  the 
individual  mind.  The  man  of  Shakespeare  is  always 
the  man  of  actual  life  as  he  is  acted  upon  by  the 
worlds  of  sense  and  of  spirit  under  certain  definite 
conditions.  We  all  of  us  may  be  in  the  position  of 
Macbeth  or  Othello  or  Hamlet,  and  we  appreciate 
their  sayings  and  deeds  potentially,  so  to  speak, 
rather  than  actually,  through  the  sympathy  of  our 
common  nature  and  not  of  our  experience.  But  with 
the  four  books  I  have  mentioned  our  relation  is  a  very 
different  one.  We  all  of  us  grow  up  through  the  Ho- 
meric period  of  the  senses;  we  all  feel,  at  some  time, 
sooner  or  later,  the  need  of  something  higher,  and, 
like  Dante,  shape  our  theory  of  the  divine  govern- 
ment of  the  universe;  we  all  with  Cervantes  discover 
the  rude  contrast  between  the  ideal  and  real,  and 
with  Goethe  the  unattainableness  of  the  highest  good 
through  the  intellect  alone.  Therefore  I  set  these 
books  by  themselves.  I  do  not  mean  that  we  read 
[     66     ] 


THE  FIVE  INDISPENSABIiE  AUTHORS 

them,  or  for  their  full  enjoyment  need  to  read  them, 
in  this  light;  but  I  believe  that  this  fact  of  their  uni- 
versal and  perennial  application  to  our  consciousness 
and  our  experience  accounts  for  their  permanence, 
and  insures  their  inmiortaUty. 


THE  IMAGINATION! 

Imagination  is  the  wings  of  the  mind;  the  under- 
standing, its  feet.  With  these  it  may  climb  high,  but 
can  never  soar  into  that  ampler  ether  and  diviner  air 
whence  the  eye  dominates  so  uncontrolled  a  prospect 
on  every  hand.  Through  imagination  alone  is  some- 
thing like  a  creative  power  possible  to  man.  It  is  the 
same  in  ^schylus  as  in  Shakespeare,  though  the 
form  of  its  manifestation  varies  in  some  outward 
respects  from  age  to  age.  Being  the  faculty  of  vision, 
it  is  the  essential  part  of  expression  also,  which  is  the 
oflBce  of  all  art. 

But  in  comparing  ancient  with  modem  imagina- 
tive literature,  certain  changes  especially  strike  us, 
and  chief  among  them  a  stronger  infusion  of  senti- 
ment and  what  we  call  the  picturesque.  I  Shall  en- 
deavor to  illustrate  this  by  a  few  examples.  But 
first  let  us  discuss  imagination  itself,  and  give  some 
instances  of  its  working. 

"Art,"  says  Lord  Verulam,  "is  man  added  to 
Nature"  (homo  additus  naturce);  and  we  may  mod- 
ernize his  statement,  and  adapt  it  to  the  demands  of 
aesthetics,  if  we  define  art  to  be  Nature  infused  with 

^  [A  small  portion  of  this  lecture  appeared  at  the  time  of  its 
delivery,  in  January,  1855,  in  a  report  printed  in  the  Boston  Daily 
Advertiser.] 

[      68      ] 


THE  IMAGINATION 

and  shaped  by  the  imaginative  faculty  of  man;  thus, 
as  Bacon  says  elsewhere,  "conforming  the  shows  of 
things  to  the  desires  of  the  mind."  Art  always  pla- 
tonizes:  it  results  from  a  certain  finer  instinct  for 
form,  order,  proportion,  a  certain  keener  sense  of  the 
rhythm  there  is  in  the  eternal  flow  of  the  world  about 
us,  and  its  products  take  shape  around  some  idea 
preexistent  in  the  mind,  are  quickened  into  life  by 
it,  and  strive  always  (cramped  and  hampered  as  they 
are  by  the  limitations  and  conditions  of  human 
nature,  of  individual  temperament,  and  outward  cir- 
cumstances) toward  ideal  perfection  —  toward  what 
Michelangelo  called 

Ideal  form,  the  universal  mould. 

Shakespeare,  whose   careless    generalizations    have 

often  the  exactness  of  scientific  definitions,  tells  us 

that 

The  lunatic,  the  lover,  and  the  poet. 
Are  of  imagination  all  compact; 

that 

as  imagination  bodies  forth 
The  forms  of  things  unknown,  the  poet's  pen 
Turns  them  to  shapes,  and  gives  to  airy  nothing 
A  local  habitation  and  a  name. 

And  a  little  before  he  had  told  us  that 

Lovers  and  madmen  have  such  seething  brains. 
Such  shaping  fantasies,  that  apprehend 
More  than  cool  reason  ever  comprehends. 

[      69      ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

Plato  had  said  before  him  (in  his  "Ion")  that  the 
poet  is  possessed  by  a  spirit  not  his  own,  and  that  he 
cannot  poetize  while  he  has  a  particle  of  understand- 
ing left.  Again  he  says  that  the  bacchantes,  possessed 
by  the  god,  drink  milk  and  honey  from  the  rivers, 
and  cannot  believe,  till  they  recover  their  senses,  that 
they  have  been  drinking  mere  water.  Empedocles 
said  that  "the  mind  could  only  conceive  of  fire  by 
being  fire." 

All  these  definitions  imply  in  the  imaginative 
faculty  the  capabilities  of  ecstasy  and  possession, 
that  is,  of  projecting  itself  into  the  very  conscious- 
ness of  its  object,  and  again  of  being  so  wholly  pos- 
sessed by  the  emotion  of  its  object  that  in  expression 
it  takes  unconsciously  the  tone,  the  color,  and  the 
temperature  thereof.  Shakespeare  is  the  highest 
example  of  this  —  for  example,  the  parting  of  Romeo 
and  JuUet.  There  the  poet  is  so  possessed  by  the  sit- 
uation, has  so  mingled  his  own  consciousness  with 
that  of  the  lovers,  that  all  nature  is  infected  too,  and 
is  full  of  partings : 

Look,  love,  what  envious  streaks 
Do  lace  the  severing  clouds  in  yonder  east. 

In  Shelley's  "Cenci,"  on  the  other  hand,  we  have 
an  instance  of  the  poet's  imagination  giving  away 
its  own  consciousness  to  the  object  contemplated,  in 
this  case  an  inanimate  one. 

[     70     J 


THE  IMAGINATION 

Two  miles  on  this  side  of  the  fort,  the  road 
Crosses  a  deep  ravine;  't  is  rough  and  narrow, 
And  winds  with  short  turns  down  the  precipice; 
And  in  its  depth  there  is  a  mighty  rock 
Which  has,  from  unimaginable  years. 
Sustained  itself  with  terror  and  with  toil 
Over  a  gulf,  and  with  the  agony 
With  which  it  clings  seems  slowly  coming  down; 
Even  as  a  wretched  soul  hour  after  hour 
Clings  to  the  mass  of  life;  yet  clinging,  leans; 
And  leaning,  makes  more  dark  the  dread  abyss 
In  which  it  fears  to  fall :  beneath  this  crag. 
Huge  as  despair,  as  if  in  weariness. 
The  melancholy  movmtain  yawns. 

The  hint  of  this  Shelley  took  from  a  passage  in 
the  second  act  of  Calderon's  "Purgatorio  de  San 
Patricio." 

No  ves  ese  pefiasco  que  parece 
Que  se  esta  sustentando  con  trabajo, 
Y  con  el  ansia  misma  que  padece 
Ha  tantos  siglos  que  se  viene  aba  jo? 

which,  retaining  the  measure  of  the  original,  may 

be  thus  paraphrased : 

Do  you  not  see  that  rock  there  which  appeareth 
To  hold  itself  up  with  a  throe  appalling. 
And,  through  the  very  pang  of  what  it  feareth. 
So  many  ages  hath  been  falling,  falling? 

You  will  observe  that  in  the  last  instance  quoted  the 
poet  substitutes  his  own  impression  of  the  thing  for 
the  thing  itself;  he  forces  his  own  consciousness  upon 
it,  and  herein  is  the  very  root  of  all  sentimentalism. 
Herein  lies  the  fault  of  that  subjective  tendency 
whose  excess  is  so  lamented  by  Goethe  and  Schiller, 
I     71     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

and  which  is  one  of  the  main  distinctions  between 
ancient  and  modem  poetry.  I  say  in  its  excess,  for 
there  are  moods  of  mind  of  which  it  is  the  natural 
and  healthy  expression.  Thus  Shakespeare  in  his 
ninety-seventh  sonnet: 

How  like  a  winter  hath  my  absence  been 
From  thee,  the  pleasure  of  the  fleeting  year! 
What  freezings  have  I  felt,  what  dark  days  seen. 
What  old  December's  bareness  everywhere! 
And  yet  this  time  remov'd  was  smnmer's  time. 

It  is  only  when  it  becomes  a  habit,  instead  of  a  mood 
of  the  mind,  that  it  is  a  token  of  disease.  Then  it  is 
properly  dyspepsia,  liver-complaint  —  what  you  will, 
but  certainly  not  imagination  as  the  handmaid  of 
art.  In  that  service  she  has  two  duties  laid  upon  her: 
one  as  the  plastic  or  shaping  faculty,  which  gives 
form  and  proportion,  and  reduces  the  several  parts 
of  any  work  to  an  organic  unity  foreordained  in  that 
idea  which  is  its  germ  of  life;  and  the  other  as  the 
realizing  energy  of  thought  which  conceives  clearly 
all  the  parts,  not  only  in  relation  to  the  whole,  but 
each  in  its  several  integrity  and  coherence. 

We  call  the  imagination  the  creative  faculty. 
Assuming  it  to  be  so,  in  the  one  case  it  acts  by  de- 
liberate forethought,  in  the  other  by  intense  sym- 
pathy —  a  sympathy  which  enables  it  to  reaUze  an 
lago  as  happily  as  a  Cordelia,  a  Caliban  as  a 
Prospero.  There  is  a  passage  in  Chaucer's  "House 
I     72     1 


THE  IMAGINATION 

of  Fame"  which  very  prettily  illustrates  this  latter 
function: 

Whan  any  speche  yeomen  ys 

Up  to  the  paleys,  anon  ryght 

Hyt  wexeth  lyke  the  same  wight. 

Which  that  the  worde  in  erthe  spak. 

Be  hyt  clothed  rede  or  blak; 

And  so  were  hys  lykenesse. 

And  spake  the  word,  that  thou  wilt  gesse 

That  it  the  same  body  be, 

Man  or  woman,  he  or  she. 

We  have  the  highest,  and  indeed  an  almost  unique, 
example  of  this  kind  of  sympathetic  imagination  in 
Shakespeare,  who  becomes  so  sensitive,  sometimes, 
to  the  thought,  the  feeling,  nay,  the  mere  whim  or 
habit  of  body  of  his  characters,  that  we  feel,  to  use 
his  own  words,  as  if  "the  dull  substance  of  his  flesh 
were  thought."  It  is  not  in  mere  intensity  of  phrase, 
but  in  the  fitness  of  it  to  the  feeling,  the  character, 
or  the  situation,  that  this  phase  of  the  imaginative 
faculty  gives  witness  of  itself  in  expression.  I  know 
nothing  more  profoundly  imaginative  therefore  in  its 
bald  simplicity  than  a  hne  in  Webster's  "Duchess  of 
Malfy."  Ferdinand  has  procured  the  murder  of  his 
sister  the  duchess.  When  her  dead  body  is  shown  to 
him  he  stammers  out: 

Cover  her  face;  mine  eyes  dazzle;  she  died  young. 

The  difference  between  subjective  and  objective 
in  poetry  would  seem  to  be  that  the  aim  of  the  former 
[     73     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

is  to  express  a  mood  of  the  mind,  often  something  in 
itself  accidental  and  transitory,  while  that  of  the 
latter  is  to  convey  the  impression  made  upon  the 
mind  by  something  outside  of  it,  but  taken  up  into 
the  mind  and  idealized  (that  is,  stripped  of  all  un- 
essential particulars)  by  it.  The  one  would  fain  set 
forth  your  view  of  the  thing  (modified,  perhaps,  by 
your  breakfast),  the  other  would  set  forth  the  very 
thing  itself  in  its  most  concise  individuality.  Sub- 
jective poetry  may  be  profound  and  imaginative  if  it 
deal  with  the  primary  emotions  of  our  nature,  with 
the  soul's  inquiries  into  its  own  being  and  doing,  as 
was  true  of  Wordsworth;  but  in  the  very  proportion 
that  it  is  profound,  its  range  is  limited.  Great  poetry 
should  have  breadth  as  well  as  height  and  depth;  it 
should  meet  men  everywhere  on  the  open  levels  of 
their  common  humanity,  and  not  merely  on  their 
occasional  excursions  to  the  heights  of  speculation 
or  their  exploring  expeditions  among  the  crypts  of 
metaphysics. 

But  however  we  divide  poetry,  the  office  of  im- 
agination is  to  disengage  what  is  essential  from  the 
crowd  of  accessories  which  is  apt  to  confuse  the 
vision  of  ordinary  minds.  For  our  perceptions  of 
things  are  gregarious,  and  are  wont  to  huddle  to- 
gether and  jostle  one  another.  It  is  only  those  who 
have  been  long  trained  to  shepherd  their  thoughts 
that  can  at  once  single  out  each  member  of  the  flock 
[     74     ] 


THE  IMAGINATION 

by  something  peculiar  to  itself.  That  the  power  of 
abstraction  has  something  to  do  with  the  imagina- 
tion is  clear,  I  think,  from  the  fact  that  everybody  is 
a  dramatic  poet  (so  far  as  the  conception  of  char- 
acter goes)  in  his  sleep.  His  acquaintances  walk  and 
talk  before  him  on  the  stage  of  dream  precisely  as  in 
life.  When  he  wakes,  his  genius  has  flown  away  with 
his  sleep.  It  was  indeed  nothing  more  than  that  his 
mind  was  not  distracted  by  the  multipUcity  of  de- 
tails which  the  senses  force  upon  it  by  day.  He  thinks 
of  Smith,  and  it  is  no  longer  a  mere  name  on  a  door- 
plate  or  in  a  directory;  but  Smith  himself  is  there, 
with  those  marvellous  commonplaces  of  his  which, 
could  you  only  hit  them  off  when  you  were  awake, 
you  would  have  created  Justice  Shallow.  Nay,  is  not 
there,  too,  that  offensively  supercilious  creak  of  the 
boots  with  which  he  enforced  his  remarks  on  the  war 
in  Europe,  when  he  last  caught  you  at  the  comer  of 
the  street  and  decanted  into  your  ears  the  stale  set- 
tlings of  a  week  of  newspapers?  Now,  did  not  Shake- 
speare tell  us  that  the  imagination  bodies  forth?  It  is 
indeed  the  verbum  cam  factum  —  the  word  made 
flesh  and  blood. 

I  said  that  the  imagination  always  idealizes,  that 
in  its  highest  exercise,  for  example,  as  in  the  repre- 
sentation of  character,  it  goes  behind  the  species  to 
the  genus,  presenting  us  with  everlasting  types  of 
tuman  nature,  as  in  Don  Quixote  and  Hamlet,  An- 
[     75     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

tigone  and  Cordelia,  Alcestis  and  Amelia.  By  this  I 
mean  that  those  features  are  most  constantly  in- 
sisted upon,  not  in  which  they  differ  from  other  men, 
but  from  other  kinds  of  men.  For  example,  Don 
Quixote  is  never  set  before  us  as  a  mere  madman,  but 
as  the  victim  of  a  monomania,  and  that,  when  you 
analyze  it,  of  a  very  noble  kind  —  nothing  less,  in- 
deed, than  devotion  to  an  unattainable  ideal,  to  an 
anachronism,  as  the  ideals  of  imaginative  men  for 
the  most  part  are.  Amid  all  his  ludicrous  defeats  and 
disillusions,  this  poetical  side  of  him  is  brought  to 
our  notice  at  intervals,  just  as  a  certain  theme  recurs 
again  and  again  in  one  of  Beethoven's  symphonies, 
a  kind  of  clue  to  guide  us  through  those  intricacies 
of  harmony.  So  in  Lear,  one  of  Shakespeare's  pro- 
foundest  psychological  studies,  the  weakness  of  the 
man  is  emphasized,  as  it  were,  and  forced  upon  our 
attention  by  his  outbreaks  of  impotent  violence;  so 
in  Macbeth,  that  imaginative  bias  which  lays  him 
open  to  the  temptation  of  the  weird  sisters  is  sug- 
gested from  time  to  time  through  the  whole  tragedy, 
and  at  last  unmans  him,  and  brings  about  his  catas- 
trophe in  his  combat  with  Macduff.  This  is  what 
I  call  ideal  and  imaginative  representation,  which 
marks  the  outlines  and  boundaries  of  character,  not 
by  arbitrary  lines  drawn  at  this  angle  or  that,  ac- 
cording to  the  whim  of  the  tracer,  but  by  those 
mountain-ranges  of  human  nature  which  divide 
[     76     1 


THE  IMAGINATION 

man  from  man  and  temperament  from  temperament. 
And  as  the  imagination  of  the  reader  must  reinforce 
that  of  the  poet,  reducing  the  generic  again  to  the 
specific,  and  defining  it  into  sharper  individuality 
by  a  comparison  with  the  experiences  of  actual  life, 
so,  on  the  other  hand,  the  popular  imagination  is 
always  poetic,  investing  each  new  figure  that  comes 
before  it  with  all  the  qualities  that  belong  to  the 
genus.  Thus  Hamlet,  in  some  one  or  other  of  his 
characteristics  has  been  the  familiar  of  us  all,  and 
so  from  an  ideal  and  remote  figure  is  reduced  to  the 
standard  of  real  and  contemporary  existence;  while 
Bismarck,  who,  if  we  knew  him,  would  probably 
turn  out  to  be  a  comparatively  simple  character,  is 
invested  with  all  the  qualities  which  have  ever  been 
attributed  to  the  typical  statesman,  and  is  clearly  as 
imaginative  a  personage  as  the  Marquis  of  Posa,  in 
Schiller's  "Don  Carlos."  We  are  ready  to  accept  any 
coup  de  theatre  of  him.  Now,  this  prepossession  is 
precisely  that  for  which  the  imagination  of  the  poet 
makes  us  ready  by  working  on  our  own. 

But  there  are  also  lower  levels  on  which  this  ideal- 
ization plays  its  tricks  upon  our  fancy.  The  Greek, 
who  had  studied  profoundly  what  may  be  called  the 
machinery  of  art,  made  use  even  of  mechanical  con- 
trivances to  delude  the  imagination  of  the  spectator, 
and  to  entice  him  away  from  the  associations  of 
everyday  life.  The  cothurnus  lifted  the  actor  to 
[     77     ] 


ox  POETRY  AND  BELIiES-LETTBES 

heroic  stature,  the  mask  prevented  the  ludicrous 
recognition  of  a  familiar  face  in  "CEdipus"  and 
"Agamemnon";  it  precluded  grimace,  and  left  the 
countenance  as  passionless  as  that  of  a  god;  it  gave 
a  more  awful  reverberation  to  the  voice,  and  it  was 
by  the  voice,  that  most  penetrating  and  sympathetic, 
one  might  almost  say  incorporeal,  organ  of  expres- 
sion, that  the  great  effects  of  the  poet  and  tragic 
actor  were  wrought.  Everything,  you  will  observe, 
was,  if  not  lifted  above,  at  any  rate  removed,  how- 
ever much  or  little,  from  the  plane  of  the  actual  and 
trivial.  Their  stage  showed  nothing  that  could  be 
met  in  the  streets.  We  barbarians,  on  the  other  hand, 
take  delight  precisely  in  that.  We  admire  the  novels 
of  Trollope  and  the  groups  of  Rogers  because,  as  we 
say,  they  are  so  real,  while  it  is  only  because  they  are 
so  matter-of-fact,  so  exactly  on  the  level  with  our 
own  trivial  and  prosaic  apprehensions.  When  Dante 
lingers  to  hear  the  dispute  between  Sinon  and  Master 
Adam,  Virgil,  type  of  the  higher  reason  and  the 
ideal  poet,  rebukes  him,  and  even  angrily. 

E  fa  ragion  ch'io  ti  sia  sempre  allato 
Si  pii  avvien  che  fortuna  t'  accoglia 
Ove  sien  genti  in  simigliante  piato; 
Chfe  voler  cid  udire  h  bassa  voglia. 

Remember,  /  am  always  at  thy  side. 
If  ever  fortune  bring  thee  once  again 
Where  there  are  people  in  dispute  like  this. 
For  wishing  to  hear  that  is  vulgar  wish. 

[      78      ] 


THE  IMAGINATION 

Verse  is  another  of  these  expedients  for  producing 
that  frame  of  mind,  that  prepossession,  on  the  part 
of  hearer  or  reader  which  is  essential  to  the  purpose 
of  the  poet,  who  has  lost  much  of  his  advantage  by 
the  invention  of  printing,  which  obliges  him  to  appeal 
to  the  eye  rather  than  the  ear.  The  rhythm  is  no 
arbitrary  and  artificial  contrivance.  It  was  suggested 
by  an  instinct  natural  to  man.  It  is  taught  him  by 
the  beating  of  his  heart,  by  his  breathing,  hastened 
or  retarded  by  the  emotion  of  the  moment.  Nay,  it 
may  be  detected  by  what  seems  the  most  monoto- 
nous of  motions,  the  flow  of  water,  in  which,  if  you 
listen  intently,  you  will  discover  a  beat  as  regular  as 
that  of  the  metronome.  With  the  natural  presump- 
tion of  all  self-taught  men,  I  thought  I  had  made  a 
discovery  in  this  secret  confided  to  me  by  Beaver 
Brook,  till  Professor  Peirce  told  me  it  was  always 
allowed  for  in  the  building  of  dams.  Nay,  for  my  own 
part,  I  would  venture  to  afl&rm  that  not  only  metre 
but  even  rhyme  itself  was  not  without  suggestion  in 
outward  nature.  Look  at  the  pine,  how  its  branches, 
balancing  each  other,  ray  out  from  the  tapering  stem 
in  stanza  after  stanza,  how  spray  answers  to  spray 
in  order,  strophe,  and  antistrophe,  till  the  perfect 
tree  stands  an  embodied  ode.  Nature's  triumphant 
vindication  of  proportion,  number,  and  harmony. 
Who  can  doubt  the  innate  charm  of  rhyme  who  has 
seen  the  blue  river  repeat  the  blue  o'erhead;  who  has 
[     79     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

been  ravished  by  the  visible  consonance  of  the  tree 
growing  at  once  toward  an  upward  and  downward 
heaven  on  the  edge  of  the  twilight  cove;  or  who  has 
watched  how,  as  the  kingfisher  flitted  from  shore  to 
shore,  his  visible  echo  flies  under  him,  and  completes 
the  fleeting  couplet  in  the  visionary  vault  below?  At 
least  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  metre,  by  its  system- 
atic and  regular  occurrence,  gradually  subjugates 
and  tunes  the  senses  of  the  hearer,  as  the  wood  of 
the  violin  arranges  itself  in  sympathy  with  the  vi- 
bration of  the  strings,  and  thus  that  predisposition 
to  the  proper  emotion  is  accomplished  which  is  essen- 
tial to  the  purpose  of  the  pest.  You  must  not  only 
expect,  but  you  must  expect  in  the  right  way;  you 
must  be  magnetized  beforehand  in  every  fibre  by 
your  own  sensibility  in  order  that  you  may  feel  what 
and  how  you  ought.  The  right  reception  of  whatever 
is  ideally  represented  demands  as  a  preliminary  con- 
dition an  exalted,  or,  if  not  that,  then  an  excited, 
frame  of  mind  both  in  poet  and  hearer.  The  imagi- 
nation must  be  sensitized  ere  it  will  take  the  im- 
pression of  those  airy  nothings  whose  image  is 
traced  and  fixed  by  appliances  as  delicate  as  the 
golden  pencils  of  the  sun.  Then  that  becomes  a  visible 
reality  which  before  was  but  a  phantom  of  the  brain. 
Your  own  passion  must  penetrate  and  mingle  with 
that  of  the  artist  that  you  may  interpret  him  aright. 
You  must,  I  say,  be  prepossessed,  for  it  is  the  mind 
I     80     1 


THE  IMAGINATION 

which  shapes  and  colors  the  reports  of  the  senses. 
Suppose  you  were  expecting  the  bell  to  toll  for  the 
burial  of  some  beloved  person  and  the  church-clock 
should  begin  to  strike.  The  first  lingering  blow  of  the 
hammer  would  beat  upon  your  very  heart,  and 
thence  the  shock  would  run  to  all  the  senses  at  once; 
but  after  a  few  strokes  you  would  be  undeceived, 
and  the  sound  would  become  commonplace  again. 
On  the  other  hand,  suppose  that  at  a  certain  hour 
you  knew  that  a  criminal  was  to  be  executed;  then 
the  ordinary  striking  of  the  clock  would  have  the 
sullen  clang  of  a  funeral  bell.  So  in  Shakespeare's 
instance  of  the  lover,  does  he  not  suddenly  find  him- 
self sensible  of  a  beauty  in  the  world  about  him  be- 
fore undreamed  of,  because  his  passion  has  somehow 
got  into  whatever  he  sees  and  hears?  Will  not  the 
rustle  of  silk  across  a  counter  stop  his  pulse  because 
it  brings  back  to  his  sense  the  odorous  whisper  of 
Parthenissa's  robe?  Is  not  the  beat  of  the  horse's 
hoofs  as  rapid  to  Angelica  pursued  as  the  throbs  of 
her  own  heart  huddling  upon  one  another  in  terror, 
while  it  is  slow  to  Sister  Anne,  as  the  pulse  that 
pauses  between  hope  and  fear,  as  she  Hstens  on  the 
tower  for  rescue,  and  would  have  the  rider  "spur, 
though  mounted  on  the  wind"? 

Dr.  Johnson  tells  us  that  that  only  is  good  poetry 
which  may   be   translated  into  sensible  prose.   I 
greatly  doubt  whether  any  very  profound  emotion 
I     81     1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

can  be  so  rendered.  Man  is  a  metrical  animal,  and 

it  is  not  in  prose  but  in  nonsense  verses  that  the 

yomig  mother  croons  her  joy  over  the  new  centre  of 

hope  and  terror  that  is  sucking  life  from  her  breast. 

Translate  passion  into  sensible  prose  and  it  becomes 

absurd,  because  subdued  to  workaday  associations,  to 

that  level  of  common  sense  and  convention  where  to 

betray  intense  feeling  is  ridiculous  and  unmannerly. 

Shall  I  ask  Shakespeare  to  translate  me  his  love 

"still  climbing  trees  in  the  Hesperides"?  Shall  I  ask 

Marlowe  how  Helen  could  "make  him  immortal 

with  a  kiss,"  or  how,  in  the  name  of  all  the  Monsieur 

Jourdains,  at  once  her  face  could  "launch  a  thousand 

ships  and  bum  the  topless  towers  of  Ilion"?  Could 

iEschylus,  if  put  upon  the  stand,  defend  his  making 

Prometheus  cry  out, 

O  divine  ether  and  swift-winged  winds. 
Ye  springs  of  rivers,  and  of  ocean  waves 
The  innumerable  smile,  all  mother  Earth, 
And  Helios'  all-beholding  roimd,  I  call: 
Behold  what  I,  a  god,  from  gods  endure! 

Or  could  Lear  justify  his 

I  tax  not  you,  you  elements,  with  unkindness; 
I  never  gave  you  kingdoms,  call'd  you  children! 

No;  precisely  what  makes  the  charm  of  poetry  is 
what  we  cannot  explain  any  more  than  we  can 
describe  a  perfume.  There  is  a  little  quatrain  (rf 
Gongora's  quoted  by  Calderon  in  his  "Alcalde  of 
Zalamea"  which  has  an  inexplicable  charm  for  me: 
I     82     ] 


THE  IMAGINATION 

Las  flores  del  romero, 

Nifia  Isabel, 
Hoy  son  flores  azules, 

Y  mafiana  serdn  miel. 

If  I  translate  it,  't  is  nonsense,  yet  I  understand  it 

perfectly,  and  it  will,  I  dare  say,  outlive  much  wiser 

things  in  my  memory.  It  is  the  very  function  of 

poetry  to  free  us  from  that  witch's  circle  of  common 

sense  which  holds  us  fast  in  its  narrow  enchantment. 

In  this  disenthralment,  language  and  verse    have 

their  share,  and  we  may  say  that  language  also  is 

capable  of  a  certain  idealization.  Here  is  a  passage 

from  the  XXXth  song  of  Drayton's  "Poly-Olbion" : 

Which  Copland  scarce  had  spoke,  but  quickly  every  Hill 
Upon  her  verge  that  stands,  the  neighbouring  valleys  fill; 
Helvillon  from  his  height,  it  through  the  mountains  threw. 
From  whom  as  soon  again,  the  sound  Dunbalrase  drew. 
From  whose  stone-trophied  head,  it  on  to  Wendrosse  went. 
Which  tow'rds  the  sea  again,  resounded  it  to  Dent, 
That  Broadwater  therewith  within  her  banks  astound. 
In  sailing  to  the  sea,  told  it  in  Egremound. 

This  gave  a  hint  to  Wordsworth,  who,  in  one  of  his 

"Poems  on  the  Naming  of  Places,"  thus  prolongs 

the  echo  of  it: 

Joanna,  looking  in  my  eyes,  beheld 
That  ravishment  of  mine,  and  laughed  aloud. 
The  Rock,  like  something  starting  from  a  sleep. 
Took  up  the  Lady's  voice,  and  laughed  again; 
The  ancient  Woman  seated  on  Helm-crag 
Was  ready  with  her  cavern;  Hammar-scar, 
And  the  tall  steep  of  Silver-how,  sent  forth 
A  noise  of  laughter;  southern  Loughrigg  heard. 
And  Fairfield  answered  with  a  mountain  tone; 

[      83      ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

Helvellyn  far  into  the  clear  blue  sky 
Carried  the  Lady's  voice,  —  old  Skiddaw  blew 
His  speaking-trumpet;  —  back  out  of  the  clouds 
Of  Glaramara  southward  came  the  voice; 
And  Kirkstone  tossed  it  from  his  misty  head. 

Now,  this  passage  of  Wordsworth  I  should  call  the 
idealization  of  that  of  Drayton,  who  becomes  poeti- 
cal only  in  the  "stone-trophied  head  of  Dunbalrase"; 
and  yet  the  thought  of  both  poets  is  the  same. 

Even  what  is  essentially  vulgar  may  be  idealized 
by  seizing  and  dwelling  on  the  generic  character- 
istics. In  "Antony  and  Cleopatra"  Shakespeare 
makes  Lepidus  tipsy,  and  nothing  can  be  droller  than 
the  drunken  gravity  with  which  he  persists  in  prov- 
ing himself  capable  of  bearing  his  part  in  the  con- 
versation. We  seem  to  feel  the  whirl  in  his  head 
when  we  find  his  mind  revolving  round  a  certain 
fixed  point  to  which  he  clings  as  to  a  post.  Antony 
is  telling  stories  of  Egypt  to  Octavius,  and  Lepidus, 
drawn  into  an  eddy  of  the  talk,  interrupts  him: 

Lepidus:  You  gave  strange  serpents  there. 
Antony  [trying  to  shake  him  off] :  Ay,  Lepidus. 
Lepidus:  Your  serpent  of  Egypt  is  bred  now  of  your  mud 
by  the  operation  of  your  sun :  so  is  your  crocodile. 
Antony  [thinking  to  get  rid  of  him] :  They  are  so. 

Presently  Lepidus  has  revolved  again,  and  continues, 
as  if  he  had  been  contradicted : 

Nay,  certainly,  I  have  heard  the  Ptolemies'  pyramises 
are  very  goodly  things;  without  contradiction,  I  have  heard 
that. 

I     84     1 


THE  IMAGINATION 

And  then,  after  another  pause,  still  intent  on  proving 
himself  sober,  he  asks,  coming  round  to  the  croco- 
dile again: 

What  manner  o'  thing  is  your  crocodile? 
Antony  answers  gravely: 

It  is  shap)ed,  sir,  like  itself,  and  it  is  as  broad  as  it  hath 
breadth;  it  is  just  so  high  as  it  is,  and  moves  with  its  own 
organs:  it  lives  by  that  which  nourisheth  it;  and  the  ele- 
ments once  out  of  it,  it  transmigrates. 

Lepidics:  What  color  is  it  of? 

Antony:  Of  its  own  color,  too. 

Lepidiis  [meditatively] :  'T  is  a  strange  serpent. 

The  ideal  in  expression,  then,  deals  also  with  the 
generic,  and  evades  embarrassing  particulars  in  a 
generalization.  We  say  Tragedy  with  the  dagger  and 
bowl,  and  it  means  something  very  different  to  the 
aesthetic  sense  from  Tragedy  with  the  case-knife  and 
the  phial  of  laudanum,  though  these  would  be  as 
effectual  for  murder.  It  was  a  misconception  of  this 
that  led  poetry  into  that  slough  of  poetic  diction 
where  everything  was  supposed  to  be  made  poetical 
by  being  called  something  else,  and  something  longer. 
A  boot  became  "the  shining  leather  that  the  leg  en- 
cased"; coffee,  "the  fragrant  juice  of  Mocha's  berry 
brown,"  whereas  the  imaginative  way  is  the  most 
condensed  and  shortest,  conveying  to  the  mind  a 
feeling  of  the  thing,  and  not  a  paraphrase  of  it.  Akin 
to  this  was  a  confounding  of  the  pictorial  with  the 
[     85      1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

imaginative,  and  personification  with  that  typical 
expression  which  is  the  true  function  of  poetry.  Com- 
pare, for  example,  CoUins's  Revenge  with  Chaucer's. 

Revenge  impatient  rose; 
He  threw  his  blood-stained  sword  in  thunder  down. 
And,  with  a  withering  look. 
The  war-denouncing  trumpet  took. 
And  blew  a  blast  so  loud  and  dread, 
Were  ne'er  prophetic  sound  so  full  of  woe! 
And  ever  and  anon  he  beat 
The  doubling  drum  with  furious  heat. 

"Words,  words,  Horatio!"  Now  let  us  hear  Chaucer 
with  his  single  stealthy  line  that  makes  us  glance 
over  our  shoulder  as  if  we  heard  the  murderous  tread 
behind  us: 

The  smiler  with  the  knife  hid  under  the  cloak. 

Which  is  the  more  terrible?  Which  has  more  danger 
in  it  —  Collins's  noise  or  Chaucer's  silence?  Here  is 
not  the  mere  difference,  you  will  perceive,  between 
ornament  and  simplicity,  but  between  a  diffuseness 
which  distracts,  and  a  condensation  which  concen- 
tres the  attention.  Chaucer  has  chosen  out  of  all 
the  rest  the  treachery  and  the  secrecy  as  the  two 
points  most  apt  to  impress  the  imagination. 

The  imagination,  as  concerns  expression,  con- 
denses; the  fancy,  on  the  other  hand,  adorns,  illus- 
trates, and  commonly  amplifies.  The  one  is  sugges- 
tive, the  other  picturesque.  In  Chapman's  "Hero  and 
Leander,"  I  read  — 

[     86     1 


THE  IMAGINATION 

Her  fresh-heat  blood  cast  figiores  in  her  eyes. 
And  she  supposed  she  saw  in  Neptune's  skies 
How  her  star  wander'd,  wash'd  in  smarting  brine. 
For  her  love's  sake,  that  with  immortal  wine 
Should  be  embathed,  and  swim  in  more  heart 's-ease 
Than  there  was  water  in  the  Sestian  seas. 

In  the  epithet  "star,"  Hero's  thought  implies  the 
beauty  and  brightness  of  her  lover  and  his  being  the 
lord  of  her  destiny,  while  in  "Neptune's  skies"  we 
have  not  only  the  simple  fact  that  the  waters  are 
the  atmosphere  of  the  sea-god's  realm,  but  are  re- 
minded of  that  reflected  heaven  which  Hero  must 
have  so  often  watched  as  it  deepened  below  her 
tower  in  the  smooth  Hellespont.  I  call  this  as  high 
an  example  of  fancy  as  could  well  be  found;  it  is 
picture  and  sentiment  combined  —  the  very  essence 
of  the  picturesque. 

But  when  Keats  calls  Mercury  "the  star  of  Lethe,'* 
the  word  "  star  "  makes  us  see  him  as  the  poor  ghosts 
do  who  are  awaiting  his  convoy,  while  the  word 
"  Lethe  "  intensifies  our  sympathy  by  making  us  feel 
his  coming  as  they  do  who  are  longing  to  drink  of 
forgetfulness.  And]  this  again  reacts  upon  the  word 
"  star,"  which,  as  it  before  expressed  only  the  shin- 
ing of  the  god,  acquires  a  metaphysical  significance 
from  our  habitual  association  of  star  with  the  no- 
tions of  hope  and  promise.  Again  nothing  can  be 
more  fanciful  than  this  bit  of  Henry  More  the  Pla- 
tonist: 

[     87     I 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

What  doth  move 
The  nightingale  to  sing  so  fresh  and  clear? 
The  thrush  or  lark  that,  mounting  high  above. 
Chants  her  shrill  notes  to  heedless  ears  of  com 
Heavily  hanging  in  the  dewy  mom? 

But  compare  this  with  Keats  again: 

The  voice  I  hear  this  passing  night  was  heard 
In  ancient  days  by  emperor  and  clown; 
Perhaps  the  self-same  song  that  found  a  path 
Through  the  sad  heart  of  Ruth  when,  sick  for  home. 
She  stood  in  tears  amid  the  alien  com. 

The  imagination  has  touched  that  word  "  alien,"  and 
we  see  the  field  through  Ruth's  eyes,  as  she  looked 
round  on  the  hostile  spikes,  not  merely  through 
those  of  the  poet. 


CRITICAL  FRAGMENTS 
I.  LIFE  IN  lilTERATURE  AND  liANGUAGE 

It  is  the  office  and  function  of  the  imagination  to 
renew  Hfe  in  lights  and  sounds  and  emotions  that  are 
outworn  and  famiUar.  It  calls  the  soul  back  once 
more  under  the  dead  ribs  of  nature,  and  makes  the 
meanest  bush  bum  again,  as  it  did  to  Moses,  with 
the  visible  presence  of  God.  And  it  works  the  same 
miracle  for  language.  The  word  it  has  touched  re- 
tains the  warmth  of  life  forever.  We  talk  about  the 
age  of  superstition  and  fable  as  if  they  were  passed 
away,  as  if  no  ghost  could  walk  in  the  pure  white 
light  of  science,  yet  the  microscope  that  can  dis- 
tinguish between  the  disks  that  float  in  the  blood  of 
man  and  ox  is  helpless,  a  mere  dead  eyeball,  before 
this  mystery  of  Being,  this  wonder  of  Life,  the  sym- 
pathy which  puts  us  in  relation  with  all  nature,  be- 
fore that  mighty  circulation  of  Deity  in  which  stars 
and  systems  are  but  as  the  blood-disks  in  our  own 
veins.  And  so  long  as  wonder  lasts,  so  long  will  imag- 
ination find  thread  for  her  loom,  and  sit  like  the  Lady 
of  Shalott  weaving  that  magical  web  in  which  "the 
shows  of  things  are  accommodated  to  the  desires  of 
the  mind." 

It  is  precisely  before  this  phenomenon  of  life  in 
[     89     1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

literature  and  language  that  criticism  is  forced  to 
stop  short.  That  it  is  there  we  know,  but  what  it  is 
we  cannot  precisely  tell.  It  flits  before  us  like  the 
bird  in  the  old  story.  When  we  think  to  grasp  it,  we 
already  hear  it  singing  just  beyond  us.  It  is  the 
imagination  which  enables  the  poet  to  give  away  his 
own  consciousness  in  dramatic  poetry  to  his  char- 
acters, in  narrative  to  his  language,  so  that  they 
react  upon  us  with  the  same  original  force  as  if  they 
had  life  in  themselves. 

II.  STYLE  AND  MANNER 

Where  Milton's  style  is  fine  it  is  very  fine,  but  it  is 
always  liable  to  the  danger  of  degenerating  into 
mannerism.  Nay,  where  the  imagination  is  absent 
and  the  artifice  remains,  as  in  some  of  the  theological 
discussions  in  "Paradise  Lost,"  it  becomes  manner- 
ism of  the  most  wearisome  kind.  Accordingly,  he  is 
easily  parodied  and  easily  imitated.  Philips,  in  his 
"Splendid  Shilling,"  has  caught  the  trick  exactly: 

Not  blacker  tube  nor  of  a  shorter  size 
Smokes  Cambrobriton  (versed  in  p>edigree. 
Sprung  from  Cadwallader  and  Arthur,  kings 
Full  famous  in  romantic  tale)  when  he. 
O'er  many  a  craggy  hill  and  barren  clifF, 
Upon  a  cargo  of  famed  Cestrian  cheese 
High  overshadowing  rides,  with  a  design 
To  vend  his  wares  or  at  the  Arvonian  mart. 
Or  Maridunum,  or  the  ancient  town 
Yclept  Brechinia,  or  where  Vaga's  stream 
Encircles  Ariconium,  fruitful  soil. 

[      90      1 


CRITICAL  FRAGMENTS 

Philips  has  caught,  I  say,  Milton's  trick;  his  real 
secret  he  could  never  divine,  for  where  Milton  is 
best,  he  is  incomparable.  But  all  authors  in  whom 
imagination  is  a  secondary  quality,  and  whose  merit 
lies  less  in  what  they  say  than  in  the  way  they  say  it, 
are  apt  to  become  mannerists,  and  to  have  imitators, 
because  manner  can  be  easily  imitated.  Milton  has 
more  or  less  colored  all  blank  verse  since  his  time, 
and,  as  those  who  imitate  never  fail  to  exaggerate, 
his  influence  has  in  some  respects  been  mischievous. 
Thomson  was  well-nigh  ruined  by  him.  In  him  a  leaf 
cannot  fall  without  a  Latinism,  and  there  is  circum- 
locution in  the  crow  of  a  cock.  Cowper  was  only 
saved  by  mixing  equal  proportions  of  Dryden  in  his 
verse,  thus  hitting  upon  a  kind  of  cross  between 
prose  and  poetry.  In  judging  Milton,  however,  we 
should  not  forget  that  in  verse  the  music  makes  a 
part  of  the  meaning,  and  that  no  one  before  or  since 
has  been  able  to  give  to  simple  pentameters  the 
majesty  and  compass  of  the  organ.  He  was  as  much 
composer  as  poet. 

How  is  it  with  Shakespeare?  did  he  have  no  style? 
I  think  I  find  the  proof  that  he  had  it,  and  that  of  the 
very  highest  and  subtlest  kind,  in  the  fact  that  I  can 
nowhere  put  my  finger  on  it,  and  say  it  is  here  or 
there.  ^ 

*  In  his  essay,  "Shakespeare  Once  More"  (Works,  iii,  pp.  86- 
42),  published  in  1868,  Mr.  Lowell  has  treated  of  Shakespeare's 

I      91      ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

I  do  not  mean  that  things  in  themselves  artificial 
may  not  be  highly  agreeable.  We  learn  by  degrees 
to  take  a  pleasure  in  the  mannerism  of  Gibbon  and 
Johnson.  It  is  something  like  reading  Latin  as  a 
living  language.  But  in  both  these  cases  the  man  is 
only  present  by  his  thought.  It  is  the  force  of  that, 
and  only  that,  which  distinguishes  them  from  their 
imitators,  who  easily  possess  themselves  of  every- 
thing else.  But  with  Burke,  who  has  true  style,  we 
have  a  very  different  experience.  If  we  go  along  with 
Johnson  or  Gibbon,  we  are  carried  along  by  Burke. 
Take  the  finest  specimen  of  him,  for  example,  "  The 
Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord."  The  sentences  throb  with 
the  very  pulse  of  the  writer.  As  he  kindles,  the  phrase 
glows  and  dilates,  and  we  feel  ourselves  sharing  in 
that  warmth  and  expansion.  At  last  we  no  longer 
read,  we  seem  to  hear  him,  so  livingly  is  the  whole 
man  in  what  he  writes;  and  when  the  spell  is  over, 
we  can  scarce  believe  that  those  dull  types  could 
have  held  such  ravishing  discourse.  And  yet  we  are 
told  that  when  Burke  spoke  in  Parliament  he  always 
emptied  the  house. 

I  know  very  well  what  the  charm  of  mere  words 
is.  I  know  very  well  that  our  nerves  of  sensation 
adapt  themselves,  as  the  wood  of  the  violin  is  said 
to  do,  to  certain  modulations,  so  that  we  receive 

style  in  a  passage  of  extraordinary  felicity  and  depth  of  critical 
judgment. 

[      92      1 


CRITICAL  FRAGMENTS 

them  with  a  readier  sympathy  at  every  repetition. 
This  is  a  part  of  the  sweet  charm  of  the  classics.  We 
are  pleased  with  things  in  Horace  which  we  should 
not  find  especially  enlivening  in  Mr.  Tupper.  Cowper, 
in  one  of  his  letters,  after  turning  a  clever  sentence, 
says,  "There!  if  that  had  been  written  in  Latin 
seventeen  centuries  ago  by  Mr.  Flaccus,  you  would 
have  thought  it  rather  neat."  How  fully  any  par- 
ticular rhythm  gets  possession  of  us  we  can  convince 
ourselves  by  our  dissatisfaction  with  any  emendation 
made  by  a  contemporary  poet  in  his  verses.  Posterity 
may  think  he  has  improved  them,  but  we  are  jarred 
by  any  change  in  the  old  tune.  Even  without  any 
habitual  association,  we  cannot  help  recognizing  a 
certain  power  over  our  fancy  in  mere  words.  In  verse 
almost  every  ear  is  caught  with  the  sweetness  of 
alliteration.  I  remember  a  line  in  Thomson's  "Castle 
of  Indolence"  which  owes  much  of  its  fascination  to 
three  m's,  where  he  speaks  of  the  Hebrid  Isles 

Far  placed  amid  the  melancholy  main. 

I  remember  a  passage  in  Prichard's  "Races  of  Man" 
which  had  for  me  all  the  moving  quality  of  a  poem. 
It  was  something  about  the  Arctic  regions,  and  I 
could  never  read  it  without  the  same  thrill.  Dr. 
Prichard  was  certainly  far  from  being  an  inspired  or 
inspiring  author,  yet  there  was  something  in  those 
words,  or  in  their  collocation,  that  affected  me  as 
I     93     ] 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

only  genius  can.  It  was  probably  some  dimly  felt 
association,  something  like  that  strange  power  there 
is  in  certain  odors,  which,  in  themselves  the  most 
evanescent  and  impalpable  of  all  impressions  on  the 
senses,  have  yet  a  wondrous  magic  in  recalling,  and 
making  present  to  us,  some  forgotten  experience. 

Milton  understood  the  secret  of  memory  perfectly 
well,  and  his  poems  are  full  of  those  little  pitfalls  for 
the  fancy.  Whatever  you  have  read,  whether  in  the 
classics,  or  in  mediaeval  romance,  all  is  there  to  stir 
you  with  an  emotion  not  always  the  less  strong  be- 
cause indefinable.  Gray  makes  use  of  the  same  arti- 
fice, and  with  the  same  success. 

There  is  a  charm  in  the  arrangement  of  words 
also,  and  that  not  only  in  verse,  but  in  prose.  The 
finest  prose  is  subject  to  the  laws  of  metrical  pro- 
portion. For  example,  in  the  song  of  Deborah  and 
Barak:  "Awake,  awake,  Deborah!  Awake,  awake, 
utter  a  song!  Arise,  Barak,  and  lead  thy  captivity 
captive,  thou  son  of  Abinoam!"  Or  again,  "At  her 
feet  he  bowed;  he  fell,  he  lay  down;  at  her  feet  he 
bowed,  he  fell;  where  he  bowed,  there  he  fell  down 
dead." 

Setting  aside,  then,  all  charm  of  association,  all 
the  influence  to  which  we  are  unconsciously  sub- 
jected by  melody,  by  harmony,  or  even  by  the  mere 
sound  of  words,  we  may  say  that  style  is  distin- 
guished from  manner  by  the  author's  power  of  pro- 
[     94     1 


CRITICAL  FRAGMENTS 

jecting  his  own  emotion  into  what  he  writes.  The 
stylist  is  occupied  with  the  impression  which  certain 
things  have  made  upon  him;  the  mannerist  is  wholly 
concerned  with  the  impression  he  shall  make  on 
others. 

III.  KALEVALA 

But  there  are  also  two  kinds  of  imagination,  or 
rather  two  ways  in  which  imagination  may  display 
itself  —  as  an  active  power  or  as  a  passive  quality 
of  the  mind.  The  former  reshapes  the  impressions  it 
receives  from  nature  to  give  them  expression  in  more 
ideal  forms;  the  latter  reproduces  them  simply  and 
freshly  without  any  adulteration  by  conventional 
phrase,  without  any  deliberate  manipulation  of  them 
by  the  conscious  fancy.  Imagination  as  an  active 
power  concerns  itself  with  expression,  whether  it  be 
in  giving  that  unity  of  form  which  we  call  art,  or  in 
that  intenser  phrase  where  word  and  thing  leap  to- 
gether in  a  vivid  flash  of  sympathy,  so  that  we  almost 
doubt  whether  the  poet  was  conscious  of  his  own 
magic,  and  whether  we  ourselves  have  not  com- 
municated the  very  charm  we  feel.  A  few  such  utter- 
ances have  come  down  to  us  to  which  every  gener- 
ation adds  some  new  significance  out  of  its  own  store, 
till  they  do  for  the  imagination  what  proverbs  do  for 
the  understanding,  and,  passing  into  the  common 
currency  of  speech,  become  the  property  of  every 
man  and  no  man.  On  the  other  hand,  wonder,  which 
I     95     1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

is  the  raw  material  in  which  imagination  finds  food 
for  her  loom,  is  the  property  of  primitive  peoples  and 
primitive  poets.  There  is  always  here  a  certain  in- 
timacy with  nature,  and  a  consequent  simplicity  of 
phrases  and  images,  that  please  us  all  the  more  as  the 
artificial  conditions  remove  us  farther  from  it.  When 
a  man  happens  to  be  bom  with  that  happy  combina- 
tion of  qualities  which  enables  him  to  renew  this 
simple  and  natural  relation  with  the  world  about 
him,  however  little  or  however  much,  we  call  him  a 
poet,  and  surrender  ourselves  gladly  to  his  gracious 
and  incommunicable  gift.  But  the  renewal  of  these 
conditions  becomes  with  the  advance  of  every  gen- 
eration in  literary  culture  and  social  refinement  more 
difficult.  Ballads,  for  example,  are  never  produced 
among  cultivated  people.  Like  the  mayflower,  they 
love  the  woods,  and  will  not  be  naturalized  in  the 
garden.  Now,  the  advantage  of  that  primitive  kind 
of  poetry  of  which  I  was  just  speaking  is  that  it  finds 
its  imaginative  components  ready  made  to  its  hand. 
But  an  illustration  is  worth  more  than  any  amount 
of  discourse.  Let  me  read  you  a  few  passages  from  a 
poem  which  grew  up  under  the  true  conditions  of 
natural  and  primitive  literature  —  remoteness,  prim- 
itiveness  of  manners,  and  dependence  on  native 
traditions.  I  mean  the  epic  of  Finland  —  Kalevala.^ 

*  This  translation  is  Mr.  Lowell's,  and,  so  far  as  I  know,  has 
not  been  printed.  —  C.  E.  Norton. 

I     96     ] 


CRITICAL  FRAGMENTS 

I  am  driven  by  my  longing. 
Of  my  thought  I  hear  the  summons 
That  to  singing  I  betake  me. 
That  I  give  myself  to  speaking. 
That  our  race's  lay  I  utter. 
Song  for  ages  handed  downward. 
Words  upon  my  lips  are  melting. 
And  the  eager  tones  escaping 
Will  my  very  tongue  outhasten. 
Will  my  teeth,  despite  me,  open. 

Golden  friend,  beloved  brother. 
Dear  one  that  grew  up  beside  me. 
Join  thee  with  me  now  in  singing. 
Join  thee  with  me  now  in  speaking. 
Since  we  here  have  come  together. 
Journeying  by  divers  pathways; 
Seldom  do  we  come  together. 
One  comes  seldom  to  the  other. 
In  the  barren  fields  far-lying. 
On  the  hard  breast  of  the  Northland. 

Hand  in  hand  together  clasping. 
Finger  fast  with  finger  clasping. 
Gladly  we  our  song  will  utter. 
Of  our  lays  will  give  the  choicest  — 
So  that  friends  may  understand  it. 
And  the  kindly  ones  may  hear  it. 
In  their  youth  which  now  is  waxing. 
Climbing  upward  into  manhood: 
These  our  words  of  old  tradition. 
These  our  lays  that  we  have  borrowed 
From  the  belt  of  Wainamoinen, 
From  the  forge  of  Ilmarinen, 
From  the  sword  of  Kaukomeli, 
From  the  bow  of  Jonkahainen, 
From  the  borders  of  the  ice-fields, 
From  the  plains  of  Kalevala. 

[      97     1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

These  my  father  sang  before  me. 
As  the  axe's  helve  he  fashioned; 
These  were  taught  me  by  my  mother. 
As  she  sat  and  twirled  her  spindle. 
While  I  on  the  floor  was  lying. 
At  her  feet,  a  child  was  rolling; 
Never  songs  of  Sampo  failed  her. 
Magic  songs  of  Lonhi  never; 
Sampo  in  her  song  grew  aged, 
Lonhi  with  her  magic  vanished. 
In  her  singing  died  Wipunen, 
As  I  played,  died  Lunminkainen. 
Other  words  there  are  a  many. 
Magic  words  that  I  have  taught  me. 
Which  I  picked  up  from  the  pathway. 
Which  I  gathered  from  the  forest. 
Which  I  snapped  from  wayside  bushes, 
Which  I  gleaned  from  slender  grass-blades. 
Which  I  found  upon  the  foot-bridge. 
When  I  wandered  as  a  herd-boy. 
As  a  child  into  the  pastures. 
To  the  meadows  rich  in  honey. 
To  the  sun-begoldened  hilltops. 
Following  the  black  Maurikki 
By  the  side  of  brindled  Kimmo. 

Lays  the  winter  gave  me  also. 
Song  was  given  me  by  the  rain-storm. 
Other  lays  the  wind-gusts  blew  me. 
And  the  waves  of  ocean  brought  them; 
Words  I  borrowed  of  the  song-birds. 
And  wise  sayings  from  the  tree-tops. 

Then  into  a  skein  I  wound  them. 
Bound  them  fast  into  a  bundle. 
Laid  upon  my  ledge  the  burthen. 
Bore  them  with  me  to  my  dwelling. 
On  the  garret  beams  I  stored  them. 
In  the  great  chest  bound  with  copper. 

[      98      ] 


CRITICAL  FRAGMENTS 

Long  time  in  the  cold  they  lay  there. 
Under  lock  and  key  a  long  time; 
From  the  cold  shall  I  forth  bring  them? 
Bring  my  lays  from  out  the  frost  there 
'Neath  this  roof  so  wide-renowned? 
Here  my  song-chest  shall  I  open. 
Chest  with  runic  lays  o'errunning? 
Shall  I  here  untie  my  bundle, 
And  begin  my  skein  unwinding? 

Now  my  lips  at  last  must  close  them 

And  my  tongue  at  last  be  fettered; 

I  must  leave  my  lay  unfinished. 

And  must  cease  from  cheerful  singing; 

Even  the  horses  must  repose  them 

When  all  day  they  have  been  running; 

Even  the  iron's  self  grows  weary 

Mowing  down  the  summer  grasses; 

Even  the  water  sinks  to  quiet 

From  its  rushing  in  the  river; 

Even  the  fire  seeks  rest  in  ashes 

That  all  night  hath  roared  and  crackled; 

Wherefore  should  not  music  also. 

Song  itself,  at  last  grow  weary 

After  the  long  eve's  contentment 

And  the  fading  of  the  twilight? 

I  have  also  heard  say  often. 

Heard  it  many  times  repeated. 

That  the  cataract  swift-rushing 

Not  in  one  gush  spends  its  waters. 

And  in  like  sort  cunning  singers 

Do  not  spend  their  utmost  secret. 

Yea,  to  end  betimes  is  better 

Than  to  break  the  thread  abruptly. 

Ending,  then,  as  I  began  them. 
Closing  thus  and  thus  completing, 
I  fold  up  my  pack  of  ballads. 
Boll  them  closely  in  a  bimdle, 

[      99      1 


ON  POETRY  AND  BELLES-LETTRES 

Lay  them  safely  in  the  storeroom. 
In  the  strong  bone-castle's  chamber. 
That  they  never  thence  be  stolen. 
Never  in  all  time  be  lost  thence. 
Though  the  castle's  wall  be  broken. 
Though  the  bones  be  rent  asunder. 
Though  the  teeth  may  be  pried  open. 
And  the  tongue  be  set  in  motion. 

How,  then,  were  it  sang  I  always 
Till  my  songs  grew  poor  and  poorer. 
Till  the  dells  alone  would  hear  me. 
Only  the  deaf  fir-trees  listen? 
Not  in  life  is  she,  my  mother. 
She  no  longer  is  aboveground; 
She,  the  golden,  cannot  hear  me, 
'T  is  the  fir-trees  now  that  hear  me, 
'T  is  the  pine-tops  understand  me. 
And  the  birch-crowns  full  of  goodness. 
And  the  ash-trees  now  that  love  me! 
Small  and  weak  my  mother  left  me, 
Like  a  lark  upon  the  cliff-top. 
Like  a  young  thrush  'mid  the  flintstones 
In  the  guardianship  of  strangers. 
In  the  keepLag  of  the  stepdame. 
She  would  drive  the  little  orphan. 
Drive  the  child  with  none  to  love  him. 
To  the  cold  side  of  the  chimney. 
To  the  north  side  of  the  cottage. 
Where  the  wind  that  felt  no  pity. 
Bit  the  boy  with  none  to  shield  him. 
Larklike,  then,  I  forth  betook  me. 
Like  a  Uttle  bird  to  wander. 
Silent,  o'er  the  country  straying 
Yon  and  hither,  full  of  sadness. 
With  the  winds  I  made  acquaintance 
Felt  the  will  of  every  tempest. 
Learned  of  bitter  frost  to  shiver. 
Learned  too  well  to  weep  of  winter. 

[      100     1 


CRITICAL  FRAGMENTS 

Yet  there  be  full  many  people 

Who  with  evil  voice  assail  me. 

And  with  tongue  of  poison  sting  me. 

Saying  that  my  lips  are  skilless. 

That  the  ways  of  song  I  know  not. 

Nor  the  ballad's  pleasant  tiu-nings. 

Ah,  you  should  not,  kindly  people. 

Therein  seek  a  cause  to  blame  me. 

That,  a  child,  I  sang  too  often. 

That,  unfledged,  I  twittered  only. 

I  have  never  had  a  teacher. 

Never  heard  the  speech  of  great  men. 

Never  learned  a  word  unhomely. 

Nor  fine  phrases  of  the  stranger. 

Others  to  the  school  were  going, 

I  alone  at  home  must  keep  me. 

Could  not  leave  my  mother's  elbow. 

In  the  wide  world  had  her  only; 

In  the  house  had  I  my  schooling. 

From  the  rafters  of  the  chamber. 

From  the  spindle  of  my  mother. 

From  the  axehelve  of  my  father. 

In  the  early  days  of  childhood; 

But  for  this  it  does  not  matter, 

I  have  shown  the  way  t©  singers. 

Shown  the  way,  and  blazed  the  tree-bark. 

Snapped  the  twigs,  and  marked  the  footpath; 

Here  shall  be  the  way  in  future. 

Here  the  track  at  last  be  opened 

For  the  singers  better-gifted. 

For  the  songs  more  rich  than  mine  are. 

Of  the  youth  that  now  are  waxing. 

In  the  good  time  that  is  coming! 

Like  Virgil's  husbandman,  our  minstrel  did  not 
know  how  well  off  he  was  to  have  been  without 
schooling.  This,  I  think,  every  one  feels  at  once  to 
be  poetry  that  sings  itself.  It  makes  its  own  tune, 
[     101     1 


ON  POETRY  AXD  BELLES-LETTRES 

and  the  heart  beats  in  time  to  its  measure.  By  and 
by  poets  will  begin  to  say,  like  Goethe,  "I  sing  as  the 
bird  sings";  but  this  poet  sings  in  that  fashion  with- 
out thinking  of  it  or  knowing  it.  And  it  is  the  very 
music  of  his  race  and  country  which  speaks  through 
him  with  such  simple  pathos.  Finland  is  the  mother, 
and  Russia  is  the  stepdame,  and  the  listeners  to  the 
old  national  lays  grow  fewer  every  day.  Before  long 
the  Fins  will  be  writing  songs  in  the  manner  of  Heine, 
and  dramas  in  imitation  of  "Faust."  Doubtless  the 
material  of  original  poetry  lies  in  all  of  us,  but  in 
proportion  as  the  mind  is  conventionalized  by  liter- 
ature, it  is  apt  to  look  about  it  for  models,  instead  of 
looking  inward  for  that  native  force  which  makes 
models,  but  does  not  follow  them.  This  rose  of  orig- 
inality which  we  long  for,  this  bloom  of  imagination 
whose  perfume  enchants  us  —  we  can  seldom  find  it 
when  it  is  near  us,  when  it  is  part  of  our  daily  lives. 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 


HEXRY  JAMES 
JAMES'S  TALES  AND  SKETCHES  i 

Whoever  takes  an  interest,  whether  of  mere  curi- 
osity or  of  critical  foreboding,  in  the  product  and 
tendency  of  our  younger  literature,  must  have  had 
his  attention  awakened  and  detained  by  the  writings 
of  Mr.  James.  Whatever  else  they  may  be,  they  are 
not  common,  and  have  that  air  of  good  breeding 
which  is  the  token  of  whatever  is  properly  called 
literature.  They  are  not  the  overflow  of  a  shallow  tal- 
ent for  improvisation  too  full  of  self  to  be  contained, 
but  show  everywhere  the  marks  of  intelligent  pur- 
pose and  of  the  graceful  ease  that  comes  only  of 
conscientious  training.  Undoubtedly  there  was  a 
large  capital  of  native  endowment  to  start  from  —  a 
mind  of  singular  subtlety  and  refinement;  a  faculty 
of  rapid  observation,  yet  patient  of  rectifying  after- 
thought; senses  daintily  alive  to  every  aesthetic  sug- 
gestion; and  a  frank  enthusiasm,  kept  within  due 
bounds  by  the  double-consciousness  of  humor.  But 
it  is  plain  that  Mr.  James  is  fortunate  enough  to 
possess,  or  to  be  possessed  by,  that  finer  sixth  sense 
which  we  call  the  artistic,  and  which  controls,  cor- 

'  A  Passionate  Pilgrim,  and  Other  Tales.  By  Henry  James,  Jr. 
Boston :  J.  R.  Osgood  &  Co. 

Transatlantic  Sketches,  By  the  same  author. 

I      105      ] 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

reels,  and  discontents.  His  felicities,  therefore,  are 
not  due  to  a  lucky  turn  of  the  dice,  but  to  fore- 
thought and  afterthought.  Accordingly,  he  is  capable 
of  progress,  and  gives  renewed  evidence  of  it  from 
time  to  time,  while  too  many  of  our  authors  show  pre- 
mature marks  of  arrested  development.  They  strike 
a  happy  vein  of  starting,  perhaps,  and  keep  on  grub- 
bing at  it,  with  the  rude  helps  of  primitive  mining, 
seemingly  unaware  that  it  is  daily  growing  more  and 
more  slender.  Even  should  it  wholly  vanish,  they  per- 
sist in  the  vain  hope  of  recovering  it  further  on,  as  if 
in  literature  two  successes  of  precisely  the  same  kind 
were  possible  Nay,  most  of  them  have  hit  upon  no 
vein  at  all,  but  picked  up  a  nugget  rather,  and  per- 
severe in  raking  the  surface  of  things,  if  haply  they 
may  chance  upon  another.  The  moral  of  one  of 
Hawthorne's  stories  is  that  there  is  no  element  of 
treasure-trove  in  success,  but  that  true  luck  lies  in 
the  deep  and  assiduous  cultivation  of  our  own  plot 
of  ground,  be  it  larger  or  smaller.  For  indeed  the 
only  estate  of  man  that  savors  of  the  realty  is  in  his 
mind.  Mr.  James  seems  to  have  arrived  early  at  an 
understanding  of  this,  and  to  have  profited  by  the 
best  modern  appliances  of  self -culture.  In  conception 
and  expression  is  he  essentially  an  artist  and  not  an 
irresponsible  trouvhe.  If  he  allow  himself  an  occa- 
sional carelessness,  it  is  not  from  incaution,  but  be- 
cause he  knows  perfectly  well  what  he  is  about.  He 
[     106     1 


HENRY  JAMES 

is  quite  at  home  in  the  usages  of  the  best  literary 
society.  In  his  writing  there  is  none  of  that  hit-or- 
miss  playing  at  snapdragon  with  language,  of  that 
clownish  bearing-on  in  what  should  be  the  light 
strokes,  as  if  mere  emphasis  were  meaning,  and  natu- 
rally none  of  the  slovenliness  that  offends  a  trained 
judgment  in  the  work  of  so  many  of  our  writers  later, 
unmistakably  clever  as  they  are.  In  short,  he  has 
tone,  the  last  result  and  surest  evidence  of  an  intellect 
reclaimed  from  the  rudeness  of  nature,  for  it  means 
self-restraint.  The  story  of  Handel's  composing  al- 
ways in  full  dress  conveys  at  least  the  useful  lesson 
of  a  gentlemanlike  deference  for  the  art  a  man  pro- 
fesses and  for  the  public  whose  attention  he  claims. 
Mr.  James,  as  we  see  in  his  sketches  of  travel,  is  not 
averse  to  the  lounging  ease  of  a  shooting-jacket,  but 
he  respects  the  usages  of  convention,  and  at  the 
canonical  hours  is  sure  to  be  found  in  the  required 
toilet.  He  does  not  expect  the  company  to  pardon 
his  own  indolence  as  one  of  the  necessary  append- 
ages of  originality.  Always  considerate  himself,  his 
readers  soon  find  reason  to  treat  him  with  consider- 
ation. For  they  soon  come  to  see  that  literature  may 
be  light  and  at  the  same  time  thoughtful;  that  light- 
ness, indeed,  results  much  more  surely  from  serious 
study  than  from  the  neglect  of  it. 

We  have  said  that  Mr.  James  was  emphatically  a 
man  of  culture,  and  we  are  old-fashioned  enough  to 
[     107     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

look  upon  him  with  the  more  interest  as  a  specimen 
of  exclusively  modern  culture.  Of  any  classical  train- 
ing we  have  failed  to  detect  the  traces  in  him.  His 
allusions,  his  citations,  are  in  the  strictest  sense  con- 
temporary, and  indicate,  if  we  may  trust  our  divi- 
nation, a  preference  for  French  models,  Balzac,  De 
Musset,  Feuillet,  Taine,  Gautier,  Merimee,  Sainte- 
Beuve,  especially  the  three  latter.  He  emulates  suc- 
cessfully their  suavity,  their  urbanity,  their  clever 
knack  of  conveying  a  fuller  meaning  by  innuendo 
than  by  direct  bluntness  of  statement.  If  not  the 
best  school  for  substance,  it  is  an  admirable  one  for 
method,  and  for  so  much  of  style  as  is  attainable  by 
example.  It  is  the  same  school  in  which  the  writers 
of  what  used  to  be  called  our  classical  period  learned 
the  superior  efficacy  of  the  French  small-sword  as 
compared  with  the  English  cudgel,  and  Mr.  James 
shows  the  graceful  suppleness  of  that  excellent 
academy  of  fence  in  which  a  man  distinguishes  by 
effacing  himself.  He  has  the  dexterous  art  of  letting 
us  feel  the  point  of  his  individuality  without  making 
us  obtrusively  aware  of  his  presence.  We  arrive  at  an 
intimate  knowledge  of  his  character  by  confidences 
that  escape  egotism  by  seeming  to  be  made  always 
in  the  interest  of  the  reader.  That  we  know  all  his 
tastes  and  prejudices  appears  rather  a  compliment 
to  our  penetration  than  a  proof  of  indiscreetness  on 
his  part.  If  we  were  disposed  to  find  any  fault  with 
[     108     I 


HENRY  JAMES 

Mr.  James*s  style,  which  is  generally  of  conspicuous 
elegance,  it  would  be  for  his  occasional  choice  of  a 
French  word  or  phrase  (like  bonder,  se  reconnait,  ba- 
nal, and  the  like),  where  our  English,  without  being 
driven  to  search  her  coffers  round,  would  furnish  one 
quite  as  good  and  surer  of  coming  home  to  the  or- 
dinary reader.  We  could  grow  as  near  surly  with  him 
as  would  be  possible  for  us  with  a  writer  who  so  gen- 
erally endears  himself  to  our  taste,  when  he  foists 
upon  us  a  disagreeable  alien  like  abandon  (used  as  a 
noun),  as  if  it  could  show  an  honest  baptismal  cer- 
tificate in  the  registers  of  Johnson  or  Webster.  Per- 
haps Mr.  James  finds,  or  fancies,  in  such  words  a 
significance  that  escapes  our  obtuser  sense,  a  sweet- 
ness, it  may  be,  of  early  association,  for  he  tells  us 
somewhere  that  in  his  boyhood  he  was  put  to  school 
in  Geneva.  In  this  way  only  can  we  account  for  his 
once  slipping  into  the  rusticism  that  "  remembers  of  " 
a  thing. 

But  beyond  any  advantage  which  he  may  have 
derived  from  an  intelligent  study  of  French  models, 
it  is  plain  that  a  much  larger  share  of  Mr.  James's 
education  has  been  acquired  by  travel  and  through 
the  eyes  of  a  thoughtful  observer  of  men  and  things. 
He  has  seen  more  cities  and  manners  of  men  than 
was  possible  in  the  slower  days  of  Ulysses,  and  if 
with  less  gain  of  worldly  wisdom,  yet  with  an  en- 
largement of  his  artistic  apprehensiveness  and  scope 
I     109     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

that  is  of  far  greater  value  to  him.  We  do  not  mean 
to  imply  that  Mr.  James  lacks  what  is  called  knowl- 
edge of  the  world.  On  the  contrary,  he  has  a  great 
deal  of  it,  but  it  has  not  in  him  degenerated  into 
worldliness,  and  a  mellowing  haze  of  imagination 
ransoms  the  edges  of  things  from  the  hardness  of 
over-near  famiUarity.  He  shows  on  analysis  that  rare 
combination  of  qualities  which  results  in  a  man  of 
the  world,  whose  contact  with  it  kindles  instead  of 
dampening  the  ardor  of  his  fancy.  He  is  thus  ex- 
cellently fitted  for  the  line  he  has  chosen  as  a  story- 
teller who  deals  mainly  with  problems  of  character 
and  psychology  which  spring  out  of  the  artificial 
complexities  of  society,  and  as  a  translator  of  the 
impressions  received  from  nature  and  art  into  lan- 
guage that  often  lacks  only  verse  to  make  it  poetry. 
Mr.  James  does  not  see  things  with  his  eyes  alone. 
His  vision  is  always  modified  by  his  imaginative 
temperament.  He  is  the  last  man  we  should  consult 
for  statistics,  but  his  sketches  give  us  the  very  mar- 
row of  sensitive  impression,  and  are  positively  better 
than  the  actual  pilgrimage.  We  are  tolerably  familiar 
with  the  scenes  he  describes,  but  hardly  knew  before 
how  much  we  had  to  be  grateful  for.  Et  ego  in  Arcadia, 
we  murmur  to  ourselves  as  we  read,  but  surely  this 
was  not  the  name  we  found  in  our  guide-book.  It  is 
always  Dichtung  und  Wahrheit  (Goethe  knew  very 
well  what  he  was  about  when  he  gave  precedence  to 
[     110     1 


HENRY  JAMES 

the  giddier  sister)  —  it  is  always  fact  seen  through 
imagination  and  transfigured  by  it.  A  single  example 
will  best  show  what  we  mean.  "It  is  partly,  doubt- 
less, because  their  mighty  outlines  are  still  unsof  tened 
that  the  aqueducts  are  so  impressive.  They  seem  the 
very  source  of  the  solitude  in  which  they  stand;  they 
look  like  architectural  spectres,  and  loom  through 
the  light  mists  of  their  grassy  desert,  as  you  recede 
along  the  line,  with  the  same  insubstantial  vastness 
as  if  they  rose  out  of  Egyptian  sands."  Such  happy 
touches  are  frequent  in  Mr.  James's  pages,  like  flecks 
of  sunshine  that  steal  softened  through  every  chance 
crevice  in  the  leaves,  as  where  he  calls  the  lark  a 
"disembodied  voice,"  or  says  of  an  English  country- 
church  that  "it  made  a  Sunday  where  it  stood."  A 
light-fingered  poet  would  find  many  a  temptation  in 
his  prose.  But  it  is  not  merely  our  fancies  that  are 
pleased.  Mr.  James  tempts  us  into  many  byways  of 
serious  and  fruitful  thought.  Especially  valuable  and 
helpful  have  we  found  his  obiter  dicta  on  the  arts  of 
painting,  sculpture,  and  architecture;  for  example, 
when  he  says  of  the  Tuscan  palaces  that  "in  their 
large  dependence  on  pure  symmetry  for  beauty  of 
effect,  [they]  reproduce  more  than  other  modern 
styles  the  simple  nobleness  of  Greek  architecture." 
And  we  would  note  also  what  he  says  of  the  Albani 
Antinoiis.  It  must  be  a  nimble  wit  that  can  keep  pace 
with  Mr.  James's  logic  in  his  aesthetic  criticism.  It  is 
I     111     ] 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

apt  to  spring  airily  over  the  middle  term  to  the  con- 
clusion, leaving  something  in  the  likeness  of  a  ditch 
across  the  path  of  our  slower  intelligences,  which 
look  about  them  and  think  twice  before  taking  the 
leap.  Courage!  there  are  always  fresh  woods  and 
pastures  new  on  the  other  side.  A  curious  reflection 
has  more  than  once  flashed  upon  our  minds  as  we 
lingered  with  Mr.  James  over  his  complex  and  re- 
fined sensations:  we  mean  the  very  striking  contrast 
between  the  ancient  and  modem  traveller.  The 
former  saw  with  his  bodily  eyes,  and  reported  ac- 
cordingly, catering  for  the  curiosity  of  homely  wits 
as  to  the  outsides  and  appearances  of  things.  Even 
Montaigne,  habitually  introspective  as  he  was,  sticks 
to  the  old  method  in  his  travels.  The  modem  trav- 
eller, on  the  other  hand,  superseded  by  the  guide- 
book, travels  in  himself,  and  records  for  us  the 
scenery  of  his  own  mind  as  it  is  affected  by  change 
of  sky  and  the  various  weather  of  temperament. 

Mr.  James,  in  his  sketches,  frankly  acknowledges 
his  preference  of  the  Old  World.  Life  —  which  here 
seems  all  drab  to  him,  without  due  lights  and  shades 
of  social  contrast,  without  that  indefinable  sugges- 
tion of  immemorial  antiquity  which  has  so  large  a 
share  in  picturesque  impression  —  is  there  a  dome 
of  many-colored  glass  irradiating  both  senses  and 
imagination.  We  shall  not  blame  him  too  gravely  for 
this,  as  if  an  American  had  not  as  good  a  right  as 
[     112     ] 


HENRY  JAMES 

any  ancient  of  them  all  to  say,  Ubi  libertas,  ibi  patria. 
It  is  no  real  paradox  to  affirm  that  a  man's  love  of 
his  country  may  often  be  gauged  by  his  disgust  at  it. 
But  we  think  it  might  fairly  be  argued  against  him 
that  the  very  absence  of  that  distracting  complexity 
of  associations  might  help  to  produce  that  solitude 
which  is  the  main  feeder  of  imagination.  Certainly, 
Hawthorne,  with  whom  no  modern  European  can  be 
matched  for  the  subtlety  and  power  of  this  marvel- 
lous quality,  is  a  strong  case  on  the  American  side 
of  the  question. 

Mr.  James's  tales,  if  without  any  obvious  moral, 
are  sure  to  have  a  clearly  defined  artistic  purpose. 
They  are  careful  studies  of  character  thrown  into 
dramatic  action,  and  the  undercurrent  of  motive  is, 
as  it  should  be,  not  in  the  circumstances  but  in  the 
characters  themselves.  It  is  by  delicate  touches  and 
hints  that  his  effects  are  produced.  The  reader  is 
called  upon  to  do  his  share,  and  will  find  his  reward 
in  it,  for  Mr.  James,  as  we  cannot  too  often  insist,  is 
first  and  always  an  artist.  Nowhere  does  he  show  his 
fine  instinct  more  to  the  purpose  than  in  leaving  the 
tragic  element  of  tales  (dealing  as  they  do  with  con- 
temporary life,  and  that  mainly  in  the  drawing-room) 
to  take  care  of  itself,  and  in  confining  the  outward 
expression  of  passion  within  the  limits  of  a  decorous 
amenity.  Those  who  must  have  their  intellectual 
gullets  tingled  with  the  fiery  draught  of  coarse  sensa- 
[     113     ] 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

tion  must  go  elsewhere  for  their  dram;  but  whoever 
is  capable  of  the  aroma  of  the  more  delicate  vintages 
will  find  it  here.  In  the  volume  before  us  "Madame 
de  Mauves"  will  illustrate  what  we  mean.  There  is 
no  space  for  detailed  analysis,  even  if  that  were  ever 
adequate  to  give  the  true  impression  of  stories  so 
carefully  worked  out  and  depending  so  much  for 
their  effect  on  a  gradual  cumulation  of  particulars 
each  in  itself  unemphatic.  We  have  said  that  Mr. 
James  shows  promise  as  well  as  accomplishment, 
gaining  always  in  mastery  of  his  material.  It  is  but 
a  natural  inference  from  this  that  his  "Roderick 
Hudson"  is  the  fullest  and  most  finished  proof  of 
his  power  as  a  story-teller.  Indeed,  we  may  say 
frankly  that  it  pleases  us  the  more  because  the 
characters  are  drawn  with  a  bolder  hand  and  in 
more  determined  outline,  for  if  Mr.  James  need 
any  friendly  caution,  it  is  against  over-delicacy  of 
handling. 


liONGFEIiLOW 
THE  COURTSHIP  OF  MILES  STANDISH 

The  introduction  and  acclimatization  of  the  hexarri' 
eter  upon  English  soil  has  been  an  afifair  of  more  than 
two  centuries.  The  attempt  was  first  systemati- 
cally made  during  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  but  the 
metre  remained  a  feeble  exotic  that  scarcely  bur- 
geoned under  glass.  Gabriel  Harvey,  —  a  kind  of 
Don  Adriano  de  Armado,  —  whose  chief  claim  to 
remembrance  is,  that  he  was  the  friend  of  Spenser, 
boasts  that  he  was  the  first  to  whom  the  notion  of 
transplantation  occurred.  In  his  "Foure  Letters" 
(1592)  he  says,  "If  I  never  deserve  anye  better  re- 
membraunce,  let  mee  rather  be  Epitaphed,  the  In- 
ventour  of  the  English  Hexameter,  whome  learned 
M.  Stanihurst  imitated  in  his  Virgill,  and  excellent 
Sir  Phillip  Sidney  disdained  not  to  follow  in  his 
Arcadia  and  elsewhere."  This  claim  of  invention, 
however,  seems  to  have  been  an  afterthought  with 
Harvey,  for,  in  the  letters  which  passed  between 
him  and  Spenser  in  1579,  he  speaks  of  himself  more 
modestly  as  only  a  collaborator  with  Sidney  and 
others  in  the  good  work.  The  Earl  of  Surrey  is  said 
to  have  been  the  first  who  wrote  thus  in  English. 
The  most  successful  person,  however,  was  William 
Webb,  who  translated  two  of  Virgil's  Eclogues  with 
[     115     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

a  good  deal  of  spirit  and  harmony.  Ascham,  in  his 
"Schoolmaster"  (1570),  had  already  suggested  the 
adoption  of  the  ancient  hexameter  by  English  poets; 
but  Ascham  (as  afterwards  Puttenham  in  his  "Art 
of  Poesie")  thought  the  number  of  monosyllabic 
words  in  English  an  insuperable  objection  to  verses 
in  which  there  was  a  large  proportion  of  dactyls, 
and  reconmiended,  therefore,  that  a  trial  should  be 
made  with  iambics.  Spenser,  at  Harvey's  instance, 
seems  to  have  tried  his  hand  at  the  new  kind  of  verse. 
He  says: 

I  like  your  late  Englishe  Hexameters  so  exceedingly  well, 
that  I  also  enure  my  penne  sometimes  in  that  kinde.  .  .  . 
For  the  onely  or  chiefest  hardnesse,  whych  seemeth,  is  in 
the  Accente,  which  sometime  gapeth,  and,  as  it  were, 
yawneth  ilfauouredly,  coming  shorte  of  that  it  should,  and 
sometime  exceeding  the  measure  of  the  Nimiber,  as  in 
Carpenter;  the  middle  sillable  being  vsed  shorte  in  Speache, 
when  it  shall  be  read  long  in  Verse,  seemeth  like  a  lame 
Gosling  that  draweth  one  legge  after  hir  and  Heaven,  being 
used  shorte  as  one  sillable,  when  it  is  m  Verse  stretched  out 
with  a  Diastole,  is  like  a  lame  dogge  that  holdes  up  one 
legge.  But  it  is  to  be  wonne  with  Custome,  and  rough  words 
must  be  subdued  with  Vse.  For  why  a  God's  name  may 
not  we,  as  else  the  Greekes,  have  the  kingdome  of  our  owne 
Language,  and  measure  our  Accentes  by  the  Sounde,  re- 
serving the  Quantitie  to  the  Verse? 

The  amiable  Edmonde  seems  to  be  smiling  in  his 

sleeve  as  he  writes  this  sentence.  He  instinctively  saw 

the  absurdity  of  attempting  to  subdue  English  to 

misunderstood  laws  of  Latin  quantities,  which  would, 

[      116      1 


LONGFELLOW 

for  example,  make  the  vowel  in  "  debt  '*  long,  in  the 
teeth  of  use  and  wont. 

We  give  a  specimen  of  the  hexameters  which  satis- 
fied so  entirely  the  ear  of  Master  Gabriel  Harvey,  — 
an  ear  that  must  have  been  long  by  position,  in  virtue 
of  its  place  on  his  head. 

Not  the  like  Discourser,  for  Tongue  and  head  to  be  f6und  out; 
Not  the  like  resolute  Man,  for  great  and  serious  d£Fayres; 
Not  the  like  Lynx,  to  spie  out  secretes  and  priuities  of  States; 
Eyed  like  to  Argus,  Earde  like  to  Midas,  Nosd  like  to  Naso, 
Winged  like  to  Mercury,  fittst  of  a  Thousand  for  to  be  employed. 

And  here  are  a  few  from  "worthy  M.  Stany- 

hurst's"  translation  of  the  "iEneid." 

Laocoon  storming  from  Princelie  Castel  is  hastning. 

And  a  far  of  beloing:  What  fond  phantastical  harebraine 

Madnesse  hath  enchaunted  yoiur  wits,  you  townsmen  imhappie? 

Weene  you  (blind  hodipecks)  the  Greekish  nauie  returned. 

Or  that  their  presents  want  craft?  is  subtil  Vlisses 

So  soone  forgotten?  My  life  for  an  hauKpennie  (Trojans),  etc. 

Mr.  Abraham  Fraunce  translates  two  verses  of 
Heliodorus  thus :  — 

Now  had  fyery  Phlegon  his  dayes  reuolution  ended. 
And  his  snoring  snowt  with  salt  wanes  all  to  bee  washed. 

Witty  Tom  Nash  was  right  enough  when  he  called 
this  kind  of  stuff,  "that  drunken,  staggering  kinde  of 
verse  which  is  all  vp  hill  and  downe  hill,  like  the  waye 
betwixt  Stamford  and  Beechfeeld,  and  goes  like  a 
horse  plunging  through  the  myre  in  the  deep  of  win- 
ter, now  soust  up  to  the  saddle,  and  straight  aloft  on 
his  tiptoes."  It  will  be  noticed  that  his  prose  falls  into 
I     117     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

a  kind  of  tipsy  hexameter.  The  attempt  in  England 
at  that  time  failed,  but  the  controversy  to  which  it 
gave  rise  was  so  far  useful  that  it  called  forth  Samuel 
Daniel's  "Defence  of  Ryme"  (1603),  one  of  the  no- 
blest pieces  of  prose  in  the  language.  Hall  also,  in  his 
"Satires,"  condemned  the  heresy  in  some  verses  re- 
markable for  their  grave  beauty  and  strength. 

The  revival  of  the  hexameter  in  modem  poetry  is 
due  to  Johann  Heinrich  Voss,  a  man  of  genius,  an  ad- 
mirable metrist,  and,  Schlegel's  sneer  to  the  contrary 
notwithstanding,  hitherto  the  best  translator  of  Ho- 
mer. His  "Odyssey"  (1783),  his  "Eiad"  (1791),  and 
his  "Luise"  (1795),  were  confessedly  Goethe's  teach- 
ers in  this  kind  of  verse.  The  "Hermann  and  Doro- 
thea" of  the  latter  (1798)  was  the  first  true  poem 
written  in  modem  hexameters.  From  Germany, 
Southey  imported  that  and  other  classic  metres  into 
England,  and  we  should  be  grateful  to  him,  at  least, 
for  having  given  the  model  for  Canning's  "Elnife- 
grinder."  The  exotic,  however,  again  refused  to  take 
root,  and  for  many  years  after  we  have  no  example  of 
English  hexameters.  It  was  universally  conceded 
that  the  temper  of  our  language  was  unfriendly  to 
them. 

It  remained  for  a  man  of  true  poetic  genius  to  make 

them  not  only  tolerated,  but  popular.  Longfellow's 

translation  of  "The  Children  of  the  Lord's  Supper" 

may  have  softened  prejudice  somewhat,  but  "Evan- 

[     118     1 


liOIfGFELLOW 

geline"  (1847),  though  encumbered  with  too  many 
descriptive  irrelevancies,  was  so  full  of  beauty, 
pathos,  and  melody,  that  it  made  converts  by  thou- 
sands to  the  hitherto  ridiculed  measure.  More  than 
this,  it  made  Longfellow  at  once  the  most  popular  of 
contemporary  English  poets,  dough's  "Bothie"  — 
a  poeni  whose  singular  merit  has  hitherto  failed  of  the 
wide  appreciation  it  deserves  —  followed  not  long 
after;  and  Kingsley's  "Andromeda"  is  yet  damp 
from  the  press. 

While  we  acknowledge  that  the  victory  thus  won 
by  "Evangeline"  is  a  striking  proof  of  the  genius  of 
the  author,  we  confess  that  we  have  never  been  able 
to  overcome  the  feeling  that  the  new  metre  is  a  dan- 
gerous and  deceitful  one.  It  is  too  easy  to  write,  and 
too  uniform  for  true  pleasure  in  reading.  Its  ease 
sometimes  leads  Mr.  Longfellow  into  prose,  —  as  in 
the  verse 

Combed  and  wattled  gules  and  all  the  rest  of  the  blazon, 

and  into  a  prosaic  phraseology  which  has  now  and 
then  infected  his  style  in  other  metres,  as  where  he 
says 

Spectral  gleam  their  snow-white  dresses, 

using  a  word  as  essentially  unpoetic  as  "  surtout  or 
pea-jacket."  We  think  one  great  danger  of  the  hex- 
ameter is,  that  it  gradually  accustoms  the  poet  to  be 
content  with  a  certain  regular  recurrence  of  accented 
[     119     1 


REVIEWS  OP  CONTEMPORARIES 

sounds,  to  the  neglect  of  the  poetic  value  of  lan- 
guage and  intensity  of  phrase. 

But  while  we  frankly  avow  our  infidelity  as  regards 
the  metre,  we  as  frankly  confess  our  admiration  of 
the  high  qualities  of  "Miles  Standish."  In  construc- 
tion we  think  it  superior  to  "Evangeline";  the  narra- 
tive is  more  straightforward,  and  the  characters  are 
defined  with  a  firmer  touch.  It  is  a  poem  of  wonder- 
ful picturesqueness,  tenderness,  and  simplicity,  and 
the  situations  are  all  conceived  with  the  truest  artis- 
tic feeling.  Nothing  can  be  better,  to  our  thinking, 
than  the  picture  of  Standish  and  Alden  in  the  open- 
ing scene,  tinged  as  it  is  with  a  delicate  humor,  which 
the  contrast  between  the  thoughts  and  characters  of 
the  two  heightens  almost  to  pathos.  The  pictures  of 
Priscilla  spinning,  and  the  bridal  procession,  are  also 
masterly.  We  feel  charmed  to  see  such  exquisite  im- 
aginations conjured  out  of  the  little  old  familiar  anec- 
dote of  John  Alden's  vicarious  wooing.  We  are  aston- 
ished, like  the  fisherman  in  the  Arabian  tale,  that 
so  much  genius  could  be  contained  in  so  small  and 
leaden  a  casket.  Those  who  cannot  associate  senti- 
ment with  the  fair  Priscilla's  maiden  name  of  Mul- 
lins  may  be  consoled  by  hearing  that  it  is  only  a  cor- 
ruption of  the  Huguenot  Desmoulins  —  as  Barnum 
is  of  the  Norman  Vernon. 

Indifferent  poets  comfort  themselves  with  the  no- 
tion that  contemporary  popularity  is  no  test  of  merit, 
[     120     ] 


liOXGFELLOW 

and  that  true  poetry  must  always  wait  for  a  new  gen- 
eration to  do  it  justice.  The  theory  is  not  true  in  any 
general  sense.  With  hardly  an  exception,  the  poetry 
that  was  ever  to  receive  a  wide  appreciation  has  re- 
ceived it  at  once.  Popularity  in  itself  is  no  test  of  per- 
manent literary  fame,  but  the  kind  of  it  is  and  always 
has  been  a  very  decided  one.  Mr.  Longfellow  has 
been  greatly  popular  because  he  so  greatly  deserved 
it.  He  has  the  secret  of  all  the  great  poets  —  the 
power  of  expressing  universal  sentiments  simply  and 
naturally.  A  false  standard  of  criticism  has  obtained 
of  late,  which  brings  a  brick  as  a  sample  of  the  house, 
a  line  or  two  of  condensed  expression  as  a  gauge  of 
the  poem.  But  it  is  only  the  whole  poem  that  is  a 
proof  of  the  poem,  and  there  are  twenty  fragmentary 
poets,  for  one  who  is  capable  of  simple  and  sustained 
beauty.  Of  this  quality  Mr.  Longfellow  has  given  re- 
peated and  striking  examples,  and  those  critics  are 
strangely  mistaken  who  think  that  what  he  does  is 
easy  to  be  done,  because  he  has  the  power  to  make  it 
seem  so.  We  think  his  chief  fault  is  a  too  great  tend- 
ency to  moralize,  or  rather,  a  distrust  of  his  readers, 
which  leads  him  to  point  out  the  moral  which  he 
wishes  to  be  drawn  from  any  special  poem.  We  wish, 
for  example,  that  the  last  two  stanzas  could  be  cut 
ofif  from  "The  Two  Angels,"  a  poem  which,  without 
them,  is  as  perfect  as  anything  in  the  language. 
Many  of  the  pieces  in  this  volume  having  already 
[     121     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

shone  as  captain  jewels  in  Maga's  carcanet,  need  no 
comment  from  us;  and  we  should,  perhaps,  have 
avoided  the  delicate  responsibility  of  criticizing  one 
of  our  most  precious  contributors,  had  it  not  been 
that  we  have  seen  some  very  unfair  attempts  to  de- 
preciate Mr.  Longfellow,  and  that,  as  it  seemed  to 
us,  for  qualities  which  stamp  him  as  a  true  and  origi- 
nal poet.  The  writer  who  appeals  to  more  peculiar 
moods  of  mind,  to  more  complex  or  more  esoteric 
motives  of  emotion,  may  be  a  greater  favorite  with 
the  few;  but  he  whose  verse  is  in  sympathy  with 
moods  that  are  human  and  not  personal,  with  emo- 
tions that  do  not  belong  to  periods  in  the  develop- 
ment of  individual  minds,  but  to  all  men  in  all  years, 
wins  the  gratitude  and  love  of  whoever  can  read  the 
language  which  he  makes  musical  with  solace  and 
aspiration.  The  present  volume,  while  it  will  confirm 
Mr.  Longfellow's  claim  to  the  high  rank  he  has  won 
among  lyric  poets,  deserves  attention  also  as  proving 
him  to  possess  that  faculty  of  epic  narration  which  is 
rarer  than  all  others  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Li  our 
love  of  stimulants,  and  our  numbness  of  taste,  which 
craves  the  red  pepper  of  a  biting  vocabulary,  we  of 
the  present  generation  are  apt  to  overlook  this  al- 
most obsolete  and  unobtrusive  quality;  but  we  doubt 
if,  since  Chaucer,  we  have  had  an  example  of  more 
purely  objective  narrative  than  in  "The  Courtship  of 
Miles  Standish."  Apart  from  its  intrinsic  beauty,  this 
[     122     1 


LONGFELLOW 

gives  the  poem  a  claim  to  higher  and  more  thought- 
ful consideration;  and  we  feel  sure  that  posterity  will 
confirm  the  verdict  of  the  present  in  regard  to  a  poet 
whose  reputation  is  due  to  no  fleeting  fancy,  but  to 
an  instinctive  recognition  by  the  public  of  that  which 
charms  now  and  charms  always,  —  true  power  and 
originality,  without  grimace  and  distortion;  for 
Apollo,  and  not  Milo,  is  the  artistic  type  of  strength. 

TALES  OF  A  WAYSIDE  INN 

It  is  no  wonder  that  Mr.  Longfellow  should  be  the 
most  popular  of  American,  we  might  say,  of  contem- 
porary poets.  The  fine  humanity  of  his  nature,  the 
wise  simplicity  of  his  thought,  the  picturesqueness  of 
his  images,  and  the  deliciously  limpid  flow  of  his 
style,  entirely  justify  the  public  verdict,  and  give  as- 
surance that  his  present  reputation  will  settle  into 
fame.  That  he  has  not  this  of  Tennyson,  nor  that  of 
Browning,  may  be  cheerfully  admitted,  while  he  has 
so  many  other  things  that  are  his  own.  There  may  be 
none  of  those  flashes  of  lightning  in  his  verse  that 
make  day  for  a  moment  in  this  dim  cavern  of  con- 
sciousness where  we  grope;  but  there  is  an  equable 
sunshine  that  touches  the  landscape  of  life  with  a 
new  charm,  and  lures  us  out  into  healthier  air.  If  he 
fall  short  of  the  highest  reaches  of  imagination,  he  is 
none  the  less  a  master  within  his  own  sphere  —  all 
the  more  so,  indeed,  that  he  is  conscious  of  his  own 
I     123     I 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

limitations,  and  wastes  no  strength  in  striving  to  be 
other  than  himself.  Genial,  natural,  and  original,  as 
much  as  in  these  latter  days  it  is  given  to  be,  he  holds 
a  place  among  our  poets  like  that  of  Irving  among 
our  prose-writers.  Make  whatever  deductions  and 
qualifications,  and  they  still  keep  their  place  in  the 
hearts  and  minds  of  men.  In  point  of  time  he  is  our 
Chaucer  —  the  first  who  imported  a  finer  foreign 
culture  into  our  poetry. 

His  present  volume  shows  a  greater  ripeness  than 
any  of  its  predecessors.  We  find  a  mellowness  of  early 
autumn  in  it.  There  is  the  old  sweetness  native  to  the 
man,  with  greater  variety  of  character  and  experi- 
ence. The  personages  are  all  drawn  from  the  life,  and 
sketched  with  the  light  firmness  of  a  practised  art. 
They  have  no  more  individuality  than  is  necessary 
to  the  purpose  of  the  poem,  which  consists  of  a  series 
of  narratives  told  by  a  party  of  travellers  gathered  in 
Sudbury  Inn,  and  each  suited,  either  by  its  scene  or 
its  sentiment,  to  the  speaker  who  recites  it.  In  this 
also  there  is  a  natural  reminiscence  of  Chaucer;  and 
if  we  miss  the  rich  minuteness  of  his  Van  Eyck  paint- 
ing, or  the  depth  of  his  thoughtful  humor,  we  find  the 
same  airy  grace,  tenderness,  simple  strength,  and  ex- 
quisite felicities  of  description.  Nor  are  twinkles  of 
sly  humor  wanting.  The  Interludes,  and  above  all  the 
Prelude,  are  masterly  examples  of  that  perfect  ease  of 
style  which  is,  of  all  things,  the  hardest  to  attain.  The 
[      lU     ] 


LONGFELLOW 

verse  flows  clear  and  sweet  as  honey,  and  with  a  f amt 
fragrance  that  tells,  but  not  too  plainly,  of  flowers 
that  grew  in  many  fields.  We  are  made  to  feel  that, 
however  tedious  the  processes  of  culture  may  be,  the 
ripe  result  in  facile  power  and  scope  of  fancy  is  purely 
delightful.  We  confess  that  we  are  so  heartily  weary 
of  those  cataclysms  of  passion  and  sentiment  with 
which  literature  has  been  convulsed  of  late,  —  as  if 
the  main  object  were,  not  to  move  the  reader,  but  to 
shake  the  house  about  his  ears,  —  that  the  homelike 
quiet  and  beauty  of  such  poems  as  these  is  like  an 
escape  from  noise  to  nature. 

As  regards  the  structure  of  the  work  looked  at  as  a 
whole,  it  strikes  us  as  a  decided  fault,  that  the  Saga 
of  King  Olaf  is  so  disproportionately  long,  especially 
as  many  of  the  pieces  which  compose  it  are  by  no 
means  so  well  done  as  the  more  strictly  original  ones. 
We  have  no  quarrel  with  the  foreign  nature  of  the 
subject  as  such,  —  for  any  good  matter  is  American 
enough  for  a  truly  American  poet;  but  we  cannot 
help  thinking  that  Mr.  Longfellow  has  sometimes 
mistaken  mere  strangeness  for  freshness,  and  has 
failed  to  make  his  readers  feel  the  charm  he  himself 
felt.  Put  into  English,  the  Saga  seems  too  Norse;  and 
there  is  often  a  hitchiness  in  the  verse  that  suggests 
translation  with  overmuch  heed  for  literal  closeness. 
It  is  possible  to  assume  alien  forms  of  verse,  but 
hardly  to  enter  into  forms  of  thought  alien  both  in 
[     125     ] 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

time  and  in  the  ethics  from  which  they  are  derived. 
"The  Building  of  the  Long  Serpent"  is  not  to  be 
named  with  Mr.  Longfellow's  "  Building  of  the  Ship," 
which  he  learned  from  no  Heimskringla,  but  from  the 
dockyards  of  Portland,  where  he  played  as  a  boy. 
We  are  wilHng,  however,  to  pardon  the  parts  which 
we  find  somewhat  ineffectual,  in  favor  of  the  "Nun 
of  Nidaros,"  which  concludes,  and  in  its  gracious 
piety  more  than  redeems,  them  all. 


WHITTIEB 
IN  WAR  TIME,  AND  OTHER  POEMS 

It  is  a  curious  illustration  of  the  attraction  of  oppo- 
sites,  that,  among  our  elder  poets,  the  war  we  are 
waging  finds  its  keenest  expression  in  the  Quaker 
Whittier.  Here  is,  indeed,  a  soldier  prisoner  on  parole 
in  a  drab  coat,  with  no  hope  of  exchange,  but  with  a 
heart  beating  time  to  the  tap  of  the  drum.  Mr.  Whit- 
tier is,  on  the  whole,  the  most  American  of  our  poets, 
and  there  is  a  fire  of  warlike  patriotism  in  him  that 
bums  all  the  more  intensely  that  it  is  smothered  by 
his  creed.  But  it  is  not  as  a  singular  antithesis  of 
dogma  and  character  that  this  peculiarity  of  his  is 
interesting  to  us.  The  fact  has  more  significance  as 
illustrating  how  deep  an  impress  the  fathers  of  New 
England  stamped  upon  the  commonwealth  they 
founded.  Here  is  a  descendant  and  member  of  the  sect 
they  chiefly  persecuted,  more  deeply  imbued  with 
the  spirit  of  the  Puritans  than  even  their  own  lineal 
representatives.  The  New  Englander  is  too  strong 
for  the  sectarian,  and  the  hereditary  animosity  soft- 
ens to  reverence,  as  the  sincere  man,  looking  back, 
conjures  up  the  image  of  a  sincerity  as  pure,  though 
more  stern,  than  his  own.  And  yet  the  poetic  senti- 
ment of  Whittier  misleads  him  as  far  in  admiration, 
as  the  pitiful  snobbery  of  certain  renegades  perverts 
I     127     ] 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

them  to  depreciation,  of  the  Puritans.  It  is  not  in  any 
sense  true  that  these  pious  and  earnest  men  brought 
with  them  to  the  New  World  the  deliberate  fore- 
thought of  the  democracy  which  was  to  develop  itself 
from  their  institutions.  They  brought  over  its  seed, 
but  unconsciously,  and  it  was  the  kindly  nature  of 
the  soil  and  climate  that  was  to  give  it  the  chance  to 
propagate  and  disperse  itself.  The  same  conditions 
have  produced  the  same  results  also  at  the  South, 
and  nothing  but  slavery  blocks  the  way  to  a  perfect 
sympathy  between  the  two  sections. 

Mr.  Whittier  is  essentially  a  lyric  poet,  and  the 
fervor  of  his  temperament  gives  his  pieces  of  that 
kind  a  remarkable  force  and  eflPectiveness.  Twenty 
years  ago  many  of  his  poems  were  in  the  nature  of 
condones  ad  pojmlum,  vigorous  stump-speeches  in 
verse,  appealing  as  much  to  the  blood  as  the  brain, 
and  none  the  less  convincing  for  that.  By  regular 
gradations  ever  since  his  tone  has  been  softening  and 
his  range  widening.  As  a  poet  he  stands  somewhere 
between  Burns  and  Cowper,  akin  to  the  former  in 
patriotic  glow,  and  to  the  latter  in  intensity  of  reli- 
gious anxiety  verging  sometimes  on  morbidness.  His 
humanity,  if  it  lack  the  humorous  breadth  of  the  one, 
has  all  the  tenderness  of  the  other.  In  love  of  out- 
ward nature  he  yields  to  neither.  His  delight  in  it  is 
not  a  new  sentiment  or  a  literary  tradition,  but  the 
genuine  passion  of  a  man  born  and  bred  in  the  coun- 
[     128     1 


WHITTIER 

try,  who  has  not  merely  a  visiting  acquaintance  with 
the  landscape,  but  stands  on  terms  of  lifelong  friend- 
ship with  hill,  stream,  rock,  and  tree.  In  his  descrip- 
tions he  often  catches  the  expression  of  rural  scenery, 
a  very  different  thing  from  the  mere  loohsy  with  the 
trained  eye  of  familiar  intimacy.  A  somewhat  shy 
and  hermitical  being  we  take  him  to  be,  and  more 
a  student  of  his  own  heart  than  of  men.  His  charac- 
ters, where  he  introduces  such,  are  commonly  ab- 
stractions, with  little  of  the  flesh  and  blood  of  real 
life  in  them,  and  this  from  want  of  experience  rather 
than  of  sympathy;  for  many  of  his  poems  show  him 
capable  of  friendship  almost  womanly  in  its  purity 
and  warmth.  One  quality  which  we  especially  value 
in  him  is  the  intense  home-feeling  which,  without  any 
conscious  aim  at  being  American,  gives  his  poetry  a 
flavor  of  the  soil  surprisingly  refreshing.  Without  be- 
ing narrowly  provincial,  he  is  the  most  indigenous  of 
our  poets.  In  these  times,  especially,  his  uncalculat- 
ing  love  of  country  has  a  profound  pathos  in  it.  He 
does  not  flare  the  flag  in  our  faces,  but  one  feels  the 
heart  of  a  lover  throbbing  in  his  anxious  verse. 

Mr.  Whittier,  if  the  most  fervid  of  our  poets,  is 
sometimes  hurried  away  by  this  very  quality,  in  it- 
self an  excellence,  into  being  the  most  careless.  He 
draws  off  his  verse  while  the  fermentation  is  yet  going 
on,  and  before  it  has  had  time  to  compose  itself  and 
clarify  into  the  ripe  wine  of  expression.  His  rhymes 
[     129     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

are  often  faulty  beyond  the  most  provincial  license 
even  of  Bums  himself.  Vigor  without  elegance  will 
never  achieve  permanent  success  in  poetry.  We 
think,  also,  that  he  has  too  often  of  late  suffered  him- 
self to  be  seduced  from  the  true  path  to  which  his  na- 
ture set  up  finger-posts  for  him  at  every  comer,  into 
metaphysical  labyrinths  whose  clue  he  is  unable  to 
grasp.  The  real  life  of  his  genius  smoulders  into  what 
the  woodmen  call  a  smudge,  and  gives  evidence  of  it- 
self in  smoke  instead  of  flame.  Where  he  follows  his 
truer  instincts,  he  is  often  admirable  in  the  highest 
sense,  and  never  without  the  interest  of  natural 
thought  and  feeling  naturally  expressed. 

HOME  BALLADS  AND  POEMS 

The  natural  product  of  a  creed  which  ignores  the 
eesthetical  part  of  man  and  reduces  Nature  to  a  uni- 
form drab  would  seem  to  have  been  Bernard  Barton. 
His  verse  certainly  infringed  none  of  the  supersti- 
tions of  the  sect;  for  from  title-page  to  colophon 
there  was  no  sin  either  in  the  way  of  music  or  color. 
There  was,  indeed,  a  frugal  and  housewifely  Muse, 
that  brewed  a  cup,  neither  cheering  unduly  nor  in- 
ebriating, out  of  the  emptyings  of  Wordsworth's  tea- 
pot. How  that  little  busy  B.  improved  each  shining 
hour,  how  neatly  he  laid  his  wax,  it  gives  us  a  cold 
shiver  to  think  of  —  ancora  ci  raccappriccia !  Against 
a  copy  of  verses  signed  "B.  B.,"  as  we  remember 
[     180     ] 


WHITTTER 

them  in  the  hardy  Annuals  that  went  to  seed  so 
many  years  ago,  we  should  warn  our  incautious  off- 
spring as  an  experienced  duck  might  her  brood 
against  a  charge  of  B.  B.  shot.  It  behooves  men  to  be 
careful;  for  one  may  chance  to  suffer  lifelong  from 
these  intrusions  of  cold  lead  in  early  life,  as  duellists 
sometimes  carry  about  all  their  days  a  bullet  from 
which  no  surgery  can  relieve  them.  Memory  avenges 
our  abuses  of  her,  and,  as  an  awful  example,  we  men- 
tion the  fact  that  we  have  never  been  able  to  forget 
certain  stanzas  of  another  B.  B.,  who,  under  the  title 
of  "  Boston  Bard,"  whilom  obtained  from  newspaper 
columns  that  concession  which  gods  and  men  would 
unanimously  have  denied  him. 

George  Fox,  utterly  ignoring  the  immense  stress 
which  Nature  lays  on  established  order  and  prece- 
dent, got  hold  of  a  half-truth  which  made  him  crazy, 
as  half-truths  are  wont.  But  the  inward  light,  what- 
ever else  it  might  be,  was  surely  not  of  that  kind 
"that  never  was  on  land  or  sea."  There  has  been 
much  that  was  poetical  in  the  lives  of  Quakers,  little 
in  the  men  themselves.  Poetry  demands  a  richer  and 
more  various  culture,  and,  however  good  we  may  find 
such  men  as  John  Woolman  and  Elias  Boudinot, 
they  make  us  feel  painfully  that  the  salt  of  the  earth 
is  something  very  different,  to  say  the  least,  from  the 
Attic  variety  of  the  same  mineral.  Let  Armstrong 
and  Whitworth  and  James  experiment  as  they  will, 
[     131      1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

they  shall  never  hit  on  a  size  of  bore  so  precisely  ade- 
quate for  the  waste  of  human  life  as  the  journal  of  an 
average  Quaker.  Compared  with  it,  the  sandy  inter- 
vals of  Swedenborg  gush  with  singing  springs,  and 
Cotton  Mather  is  a  very  Lucian  for  liveliness. 

Yet  this  dry  Quaker  stem  has  fairly  blossomed  at 
last,  and  Nature,  who  can  never  be  long  kept  under, 
has  made  a  poet  of  Mr.  Whittier  as  she  made  a  Gen- 
eral of  Greene.  To  make  a  New  England  poet,  she 
had  her  choice  between  Puritan  and  Quaker,  and  she 
took  the  Quaker.  He  is,  on  the  whole,  the  most  repre- 
sentative poet  that  New  England  has  produced.  He 
sings  her  thoughts,  her  prejudices,  her  scenery.  He 
has  not  forgiven  the  Puritans  for  hanging  two  or 
three  of  his  co-sectaries,  but  he  admires  them  for  all 
that,  calls  on  his  countrymen  as 

Sons  of  men  who  sat  in  council  with  their  Bibles  round  the  board. 
Answering  Charles's  royal  mandate  with  a  stem  "Thus  saith  the 
Lord," 

and  at  heart,  we  suspect,  has  more  sympathy  with 
Miles  Standish  than  with  Mary  Dyer.  Indeed, 

Sons  of  men  who  sat  in  meeting  with  their  broadbrims  o'er  their 

brow. 
Answering  Charles's  royal  mandate  with  a  thee  instead  of  thou, 

would  hardly  do.  Whatever  Mr.  Whittier  may  lack, 
he  has  the  prime  merit  that  he  smacks  of  the  soil. 
It  is  a  New  England  heart  he  buttons  his  straight- 
breasted  coat  over,  and  it  gives  the  buttons  a  sharp 
[     132     J 


WHITTIER 

strain  now  and  then.  Even  the  native  idiom  crops 
out  here  and  there  in  his  verses.  He  makes  abroad 
rhyme  with  God,  law  with  war,  us  with  curse,  scomer 
with  honor,  been  with  men,  beard  with  shared.  For  the 
last  two  we  have  a  certain  sympathy  as  archaisms, 
but  with  the  rest  we  can  make  no  terms  whatever,  — 
they  must  march  out  with  no  honors  of  war.  The 
Yankee  lingo  is  insoluble  in  poetry,  and  the  accent 
would  give  a  flavor  of  essence-pennyr'y'l  to  the  very 
Beatitudes.  It  differs  from  Lowland  Scotch  as  a  patois 
from  a  dialect. 

But  criticism  is  not  a  game  of  jerk-straws,  and 
Mr.  Whittier  has  other  and  better  claims  on  us  than 
as  a  stylist.  There  is  true  fire  in  the  heart  of  the  man, 
and  his  eye  is  the  eye  of  a  poet.  A  more  juicy  soil 
might  have  made  him  a  Bums  or  a  Beranger  for  us. 
New  England  is  dry  and  hard,  though  she  have  a 
warm  nook  in  her,  here  and  there,  where  the  magnolia 
grows  after  a  fashion.  It  is  all  very  nice  to  say  to  our 
poets,  "You  have  sky  and  wood  and  waterfall  and 
men  and  women  —  in  short,  the  entire  outfit  of 
Shakespeare;  Nature  is  the  same  here  as  elsewhere"; 
and  when  the  popular  lecturer  says  it,  the  popular 
audience  gives  a  stir  of  approval.  But  it  is  all  bosh, 
nevertheless.  Nature  is  not  the  same  here,  and  per- 
haps never  will  be,  as  in  lands  where  man  has 
mingled  his  being  with  hers  for  countless  centuries, 
where  every  field  is  steeped  in  history,  every  crag  is 
[     133     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

ivied  with  legend,  and  the  whole  atmosphere  of 
thought  is  hazy  with  the  Indian  summer  of  tradition. 
Nature  without  an  ideal  background  is  nothing.  We 
may  claim  whatever  merits  we  like  (and  our  orators 
are  not  too  bashful),  we  may  be  as  free  and  en- 
lightened as  we  choose,  but  we  are  certainly  not  in- 
teresting or  picturesque.  We  may  be  as  beautiful  to 
the  statistician  as  a  column  of  figures,  and  dear  to  the 
political  economist  as  a  social  phenomenon;  but  our 
hive  has  Httle  of  that  marvellous  bee-bread  that  can 
transmute  the  brain  to  finer  issues  than  a  gregarious 
activity  in  hoarding.  The  Puritans  left  us  a  fine  estate 
in  conscience,  energy,  and  respect  for  learning;  but 
they  disinherited  us  of  the  past.  Not  a  single  stage- 
property  of  poetry  did  they  bring  with  them  but  the 
good  old  Devil,  with  his  graminivorous  attributes, 
and  even  he  could  not  stand  the  climate.  Neither 
horn  nor  hoof  nor  tail  of  him  has  been  seen  for  a 
century.  He  is  as  dead  as  the  goat-footed  Pan,  whom 
he  succeeded,  and  we  tenderly  regret  him. 
Mr.  Whittier  himself  complains  somewhere  of 

The  rigor  of  our  frozen  sky, 

and  he  seems  to  have  been  thinking  of  our  clear, 
thin,  intellectual  atmosphere,  the  counterpart  of  our 
physical  one,  of  which  artists  complain  that  it  rounds 
no  edges.  We  have  sometimes  thought  that  his  verses 
suflfered  from  a  New  England  taint  in  a  too  great 
[     134     1 


WHITTIER 

tendency  to  metaphysics  and  morals,  which  may  be 
the  bases  on  which  poetry  rests,  but  should  not  be 
carried  too  high  above-ground.  Without  this,  how- 
ever, he  would  not  have  been  the  typical  New  Eng- 
land poet  that  he  is.  In  the  present  volume  there  is 
little  of  it.  It  is  more  purely  objective  than  any  of  its 
forerunners,  and  is  full  of  the  most  charming  rural 
pictures  and  glimpses,  in  which  every  sight  and 
sound,  every  flower,  bird,  and  tree,  is  neighborly  and 
homely.  He  makes  us  see 

the  old  swallow-haunted  barns. 
Brown-gabled,  long,  and  full  of  seams 
Through  which  the  moted  simlight  streams. 
And  winds  blow  freshly  in  to  shake 
The  red  plumes  of  the  roosted  cocks 
And  the  loose  hay-mow's  scented  locks,  — 

the  cattle-yard 
With  the  white  horns  tossing  above  the  wall, 

the  spring-blossoms  that  drooped  over  the  river. 

Lighting  up  the  swarming  shad,  — 
and 

the  bulged  nets  sweeping  shoreward 
With  their  silver-siujd  haul. 

Every  picture  is  full  of  color,  and  shows  that  true 
eye  for  Nature  which  sees  only  what  it  ought,  and 
that  artistic  memory  which  brings  home  composi- 
tions and  not  catalogues.  There  is  hardly  a  hill,  rock, 
stream,  or  sea-fronting  headland  in  the  neighborhood 
of  his  home  that  he  has  not  fondly  remembered. 
I     135     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

Sometimes,  we  think,  there  is  too  much  description, 
the  besetting  sin  of  modem  verse,  which  has  sub- 
stituted what  should  be  called  wordy-painting  for 
the  old  art  of  painting  in  a  single  word.  The  essential 
character  of  Mr.  Whittier's  poetry  is  lyrical,  and  the 
rush  of  the  lyric,  like  that  of  a  brook,  allows  few 
pictures.  Now  and  then  there  may  be  an  eddy  where 
the  feeling  lingers  and  reflects  a  bit  of  scenery,  but 
for  the  most  part  it  can  only  catch  gleams  of  color 
that  mingle  with  the  prevailing  tone  and  enrich 
without  usurping  on  it.  This  volume  contains  some 
of  the  best  of  Mr.  Whittier's  productions  in  this  kind. 
"Skipper  Ireson's  Ride  "  we  hold  to  be  by  long  odds 
the  best  of  modem  ballads.  There  are  others  nearly 
as  good  in  their  way,  and  all,  with  a  single  exception, 
embodying  native  legends.  In  "Telling  the  Bees," 
Mr.  Whittier  has  enshrined  a  country  superstition  in 
a  poem  of  exquisite  grace  and  feeling.  "The  Garrison 
of  Cape  Ann"  would  have  been  a  fine  poem,  but  it 
has  too  much  of  the  author  in  it,  and  to  put  a  moral 
at  the  end  of  a  ballad  is  like  sticking  a  cork  on  the 
point  of  a  sword.  It  is  pleasant  to  see  how  much 
our  Quaker  is  indebted  for  his  themes  to  Cotton 
Mather,  who  belabored  his  un-Friends  of  former 
days  with  so  much  bad  English  and  worse  Latin. 
With  all  his  faults,  that  conceited  old  pedant  con- 
trived to  make  one  of  the  most  entertaining  books 
ever  written  on  this  side  the  water,  and  we  wonder 
I     136     1 


WHITTIER 

that  no  one  should  take  the  trouble  to  give  us  a 
tolerably  correct  edition  of  it.  Absurdity  is  common 
enough,  but  such  a  genius  for  it  as  Mather  had  is  a 
rare  and  delightful  gift. 

This  last  volume  has  given  us  a  higher  conception 
of  Mr.  Whittier's  powers.  We  already  valued  as  they 
deserved  his  force  of  faith,  his  earnestness,  the  glow 
and  hurry  of  his  thought,  and  the  (if  every  third 
stump-speaker  among  us  were  not  a  Demosthenes, 
we  should  have  said  Demosthenean)  eloquence  of  his 
verse;  but  here  we  meet  him  in  a  softer  and  more 
meditative  mood.  He  seems  a  Berserker  turned 
Carthusian.  The  half -mystic  tone  of  "The  Shadow 
and  the  Light"  contrasts  strangely,  and,  we  think, 
pleasantly,  with  the  warlike  clang  of  "From  Perugia." 
The  years  deal  kindly  with  good  men,  and  we  find  a 
clearer  and  richer  quality  in  these  verses  where  the 
ferment  is  over  and  the  rile  has  quietly  settled.  We 
have  had  no  more  purely  American  poet  than  Mr. 
Whittier,  none  in  whom  the  popular  thought  found 
such  ready  and  vigorous  expression.  The  future  will 
not  fail  to  do  justice  to  a  man  who  has  been  so  true 
to  the  present. 

SNOW-BOUND:  A  WINTER  IDYL 

At  the  close  of  his  poem  Mr.  Whittier  utters  a  hope 

that  it  may  recall  some  pleasant  country  memories 

to  the  overworked  slaves  of  our  great  cities,  and 

[     137     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

that  he  may  deserve  those  thanks  which  are  all  the 
more  grateful  that  they  are  rather  divined  by  the 
receiver  than  directly  expressed  by  the  giver.  The 
reviewer  cannot  aspire  to  all  the  merit  of  this  con- 
fidential privacy  and  pleasing  shyness  of  gratitude, 
but  he  may  fairly  lay  claim  to  a  part  of  it,  inasmuch 
as,  though  obliged  to  speak  his  thanks  publicly,  he 
need  not  do  it  to  the  author's  face.  We  are  again  in- 
debted to  Mr.  Whittier,  as  we  have  been  so  often 
before,  for  a  very  real  and  a  very  refined  pleasure. 
The  little  volume  before  us  has  all  his  most  char- 
acteristic merits.  It  is  true  to  Nature  and  in  local  col- 
oring, pure  in  sentiment,  quietly  deep  in  feeling,  and 
full  of  those  simple  touches  which  show  the  poetic 
eye  and  the  trained  hand.  Here  is  a  New  England 
interior  glorified  with  something  of  that  inward  light 
which  is  apt  to  be  rather  warmer  in  the  poet  than 
the  Quaker,  but  which,  blending  the  qualities  of  both 
in  Mr.  Whittier,  produces  that  kind  of  spiritual  pic- 
turesqueness  which  gives  so  peculiar  a  charm  to  his 
verse.  There  is  in  this  poem  a  warmth  of  affectionate 
memory  and  religious  faith  as  touching  as  it  is  un- 
common, and  which  would  be  altogether  delightful 
if  it  did  not  remind  us  that  the  poet  was  growing  old. 
Not  that  there  is  any  other  mark  of  senescence  than 
the  ripened  sweetness  of  a  life  both  publicly  and 
privately  well  spent.  There  is  fire  enough,  but  it 
glows  more  equably  and  shines  on  sweeter  scenes 
[     138     1 


WHITTEER 

than  in  the  poet's  earlier  verse.  It  Is  as  if  a  brand 
from  the  camp-fire  had  kindled  these  logs  on  the  old 
homestead's  hearth,  whose  flickering  benediction 
touches  tremulously  those  dear  heads  of  long  ago 
that  are  now  transfigured  with  a  holier  light.  The 
father,  the  mother,  the  uncle,  the  schoolmaster,  the 
uncanny  guest,  are  all  painted  in  warm  and  natural 
colors,  with  perfect  truth  of  detail  and  yet  with  all 
the  tenderness  of  memory.  Of  the  family  group  the 
poet  is  the  last  on  earth,  and  there  is  something 
deeply  touching  in  the  pathetic  sincerity  of  the 
affection  which  has  outlived  them  all,  looking  back 
to  before  the  parting,  and  forward  to  the  assured 
reunion. 

But  aside  from  its  poetic  and  personal  interest, 
and  the  pleasure  it  must  give  to  every  one  who  loves 
pictures  from  the  life,  "Snow-Bound"  has  some- 
thing of  historical  interest.  It  describes  scenes  and 
manners  which  the  rapid  changes  of  our  national 
habits  will  soon  have  made  as  remote  from  us  as  if 
they  were  foreign  or  ancient.  Already,  alas!  even  in 
farmhouses,  backlog  and  forestick  are  obsolescent 
words,  and  close-mouthed  stoves  chill  the  spirit  while 
they  bake  the  flesh  with  their  grim  and  undemon- 
strative hospitality.  Already  are  the  railroads  dis- 
placing the  companionable  cheer  of  crackling  walnut 
with  the  dogged  self-complacency  and  sullen  virtue 
of  anthracite.  Even  where  wood  survives,  he  is  too 
[     139     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

often  shut  in  the  dreary  madhouse  cell  of  an  air- 
tight, round  which  one  can  no  more  fancy  a  social 
mug  of  flip  circling  than  round  a  coflSn.  Let  us  be 
thankful  that  we  can  sit  in  Mr.  Whittier's  chimney- 
comer  and  believe  that  the  blaze  he  has  kindled  for 
us  shall  still  warm  and  cheer,  when  a  wood  fire  is  as 
faint  a  tradition  in  New  as  in  Old  England. 

We  have  before  had  occasion  to  protest  against 
Mr.  Whittier's  carelessness  in  accents  and  rhymes, 
as  in  pronouncing  "ly'ceum,"  and  joining  in  un- 
hallowed matrimony  such  soimds  as  avm  and  orn, 
ents  and  ence.  We  would  not  have  the  Muse  emulate 
the  unidiomatic  preciseness  of  a  normal  school- 
mistress, but  we  cannot  help  thinking  that,  if  Mr. 
Whittier  writes  thus  on  principle,  as  we  begin  to 
suspect,  he  errs  in  forgetting  that  thought  so  refined 
as  his  can  be  fitly  matched  only  with  an  equal  re- 
finement of  expression,  and  loses  something  of  its 
charm  when  cheated  of  it.  We  hope  he  will,  at  least, 
never  mount  Pega'sus,  or  water  him  in  Heli'con,  and 
that  he  will  leave  Mu'seum  to  the  more  vulgar 
sphere  and  obtuser  sensibilities  of  Bamum.  Where 
Nature  has  sent  genius,  she  has  a  right  to  expect 
that  it  shall  be  treated  with  a  certain  elegance  of 
hospitality. 


POETRY  Amy  NATIOIfALITYi 

One  of  the  dreams  of  our  earlier  horoscope-mongers 
was,  that  a  poet  should  come  out  of  the  West,  fash- 
ioned on  a  scale  somewhat  proportioned  to  our  geo- 
graphical pretensions.  Our  rivers,  forests,  mountains, 
cataracts,  prairies,  and  inland  seas  were  to  find  in 
him  their  antitype  and  voice.  Shaggy  he  was  to  be, 
brown-fisted,  careless  of  proprieties,  unhampered  by 
tradition,  his  Pegasus  of  the  half -horse,  half -alligator 
breed.  By  him  at  last  the  epos  of  the  New  World  was 
to  be  fitly  sung,  the  great  tragi-comedy  of  democracy 
put  upon  the  stage  for  all  time.  It  was  a  cheap  vision, 
for  it  cost  no  thought;  and,  like  all  judicious  proph- 
ecy, it  muffled  itself  from  criticism  in  the  loose  dra- 
pery of  its  terms.  Till  the  advent  of  this  splendid 
apparition,  who  should  dare  affirm  positively  that  he 
would  never  come?  that,  indeed,  he  was  impossible? 
And  yet  his  impossibility  was  demonstrable,  never- 
theless. 

Supposing  a  great  poet  to  be  bom  in  the  West, 
though  he  would  naturally  levy  upon  what  had  al- 

^  This  essay,  to  which  I  have  given  the  above  title,  forms  the 
greater  part  of  a  review  of  poems  by  John  James  Piatt.  The 
brief,  concluding  portion  of  the  review  is  of  little  value  and  is 
omitted  here.  Piatt  died  several  years  ago.  He  was  a  great  friend 
of  William  Dean  Howells,  and  once  published  a  volume  of  poemis 
in  collaboration  with  him.  A.  M. 

[      141      ] 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

ways  been  familiar  to  his  eyes  for  his  images  and 
illustrations,  he  would  almost  as  certainly  look  for  his 
ideal  somewhere  outside  of  the  life  that  lay  immedi- 
ately about  him.  Life  in  its  large  sense,  and  not  as  it 
is  temporarily  modified  by  maimers  or  politics,  is  the 
only  subject  of  the  poet;  and  though  its  elements  lie 
always  close  at  hand,  yet  in  its  unity  it  seems  always 
infinitely  distant,  and  the  difference  of  angle  at  which 
it  is  seen  in  India  and  in  Minnesota  is  almost  inap- 
preciable. Moreover,  a  rooted  discontent  seems  al- 
ways to  underlie  all  great  poetry,  if  it  be  not  even  the 
motive  of  it.  The  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  paint  man- 
ners that  are  only  here  and  there  incidentally  true  to 
the  actual,  but  which  in  their  larger  truth  had  either 
never  existed  or  had  long  since  passed  away.  Had 
Dante's  scope  been  narrowed  to  contemporary  Italy, 
the  "Divina  Commedia"  would  have  been  a  picture- 
book  merely.  But  his  theme  was  Man,  and  the  vision 
that  inspired  him  was  of  an  Italy  that  never  was  nor 
could  be,  his  political  theories  as  abstract  as  those  of 
Plato  or  Spinoza.  Shakespeare  shows  us  less  of  the 
England  that  then  was  than  any  other  considerable 
poet  of  his  time.  The  struggle  of  Goethe's  whole 
life  was  to  emancipate  himself  from  Germany, 
and  fill  his  lungs  for  once  with  a  more  universal 
air. 

Yet  there  is  always  a  flavor  of  the  climate  in  these 
rare  fruits,  some  gift  of  the  sun  peculiar  to  the  region 
[     142     I 


POETRY  AND  NATIONALITY 

that  ripened  them.  If  we  are  ever  to  have  a  national 
poet,  let  us  hope  that  his  nationality  will  be  of  this 
subtile  essence,  something  that  shall  make  him  un- 
speakably nearer  to  us,  while  it  does  not  provincialize 
him  for  the  rest  of  mankind.  The  popular  recipe  for 
compounding  him  would  give  us,  perhaps,  the  most 
sublimely  furnished  bore  in  human  annals.  The  novel 
aspects  of  life  under  our  novel  conditions  may  give 
some  freshness  of  color  to  our  literature;  but  democ- 
racy itself,  which  many  seem  to  regard  as  the  neces- 
sary Lucma  of  some  new  poetic  birth,  is  altogether 
too  abstract  an  influence  to  serve  for  any  such  pur- 
pose. If  any  American  author  may  be  looked  on  as  in 
some  sort  the  result  of  our  social  and  political  ideal, 
it  is  Emerson,  who,  in  his  emancipation  from  the  tra- 
ditional, in  the  irresponsible  freedom  of  his  specula- 
tion, and  his  faith  in  the  absolute  value  of  his  own  in- 
dividuality, is  certainly,  to  some  extent,  typical;  but 
if  ever  author  was  inspired  by  the  past,  it  is  he,  and 
he  is  as  far  as  possible  from  the  shaggy  hero  of  proph- 
ecy. Of  the  sham-shaggy,  who  have  tried  the  trick 
of  Jacob  upon  us,  we  have  had  quite  enough,  and 
may  safely  doubt  whether  this  satyr  of  masquerade 
is  to  be  our  representative  singer.^  Were  it  so,  it 
would  not  be  greatly  to  the  credit  of  democracy  as 

1  This  is  undoubtedly  an  allusion  to  Walt  Whitman,  who  is 
mentioned  by  name,  also  derogatorily,  in  the  next  essay  on 
Howells.  The  Howells  essay  appeared  two  years  before  the 
above.    A.  M. 

[      M3      ] 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

an  element  of  aesthetics.  But  we  may  safely  hope  for 
better  things. 

The  themes  of  poetry  have  been  pretty  much  the 
same  from  the  first;  and  if  a  man  should  ever  be  born 
among  us  with  a  great  imagination,  and  the  gift  of 
the  right  word,  —  for  it  is  these,  and  not  sublime 
spaces,  that  make  a  poet,  —  he  will  be  original 
rather  in  spite  of  democracy  than  in  consequence  of 
it,  and  will  owe  his  inspiration  quite  as  much  to  the 
accumulations  of  the  Old  World  as  to  the  promises  of 
the  New.  But  for  a  long  while  yet  the  proper  condi- 
tions will  be  wanting,  not,  perhaps,  for  the  birth  of 
such  a  man,  but  for  his  development  and  culture.  At 
present,  with  the  largest  reading  population  in  the 
world,  perhaps  no  country  ever  offered  less  encour- 
agement to  the  higher  forms  of  art  or  the  more  thor- 
ough achievements  of  scholarship.  Even  were  it  not 
so,  it  would  be  idle  to  expect  us  to  produce  any  litera- 
ture so  peculiarly  our  own  as  was  the  natural  growth 
of  ages  less  communicative,  less  open  to  every  breath 
of  foreign  influence.  Literature  tends  more  and  more 
to  become  a  vast  commonwealth,  with  no  dividing 
lines  of  nationality.  Any  more  Cids,  or  Songs  of  Ro- 
land, or  Nibelungens,  or  Kalewalas  are  out  of  the 
question,  —  nay,  anything  at  all  like  them;  for  the 
necessary  insulation  of  race,  of  coimtry,  of  religion, 
is  impossible,  even  were  it  desirable.  Journalism, 
translation,  criticism,  and  facility  of  intercourse  tend 
[     144     ] 


POETRY  AND  NATIONALITY 

continually  more  and  more  to  make  the  thought  and 
turn  of  expression  in  cultivated  men  identical  all 
over  the  world.  Whether  we  like  it  or  not,  the 
costume  of  mind  and  body  is  gradually  becoming 
of  one  cut. 


W.  D.  HOWELLS 

VENETIAN  LIFE 

Those  of  our  readers  who  watch  with  any  interest 
the  favorable  omens  of  our  literature  from  time  to 
time,  must  have  had  their  eyes  drawn  to  short  poems, 
remarkable  for  subtilty  of  sentiment  and  delicacy  of 
expression,  and  bearing  the  hitherto  unfamiliar  name 
of  Mr.  Howells.  Such  verses  are  not  common  any- 
where; as  the  work  of  a  young  man  they  are  very  un- 
common. Youthful  poets  commonly  begin  by  trying 
on  various  manners  before  they  settle  upon  any  sin- 
gle one  that  is  prominently  their  own.  But  what  es- 
pecially interested  us  in  Mr.  Howells  was,  that  his 
writings  were  from  the  very  first  not  merely  tentative 
and  preliminary,  but  had  somewhat  of  the  conscious 
security  of  matured  style.  This  is  something  which 
most  poets  arrive  at  through  much  tribulation.  It  is 
something  which  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  measure 
of  their  intellectual  powers  or  of  their  moral  insight, 
but  is  the  one  quality  which  essentially  distinguishes 
the  artist  from  the  mere  man  of  genius.  Among  the 
English  poets  of  the  last  generation,  Keats  is  the  only 
one  who  early  showed  unmistakable  signs  of  it,  and 
developed  it  more  and  more  fully  until  his  untimely 
death.  Wordsworth,  though  in  most  respects  a  far 
profounder  man,  attained  it  only  now  and  then, 
[     146     ] 


W.  D.  HOWELIiS 

indeed  only  once  perfectly,  —  in  his  "Laodamia.** 
Now,  though  it  be  undoubtedly  true  from  one  point 
of  view  that  what  a  man  has  to  say  is  of  more  impor- 
tance than  how  he  says  it,  and  that  modern  criticism 
especially  is  more  apt  to  be  guided  by  its  moral  and 
even  political  sympathies  than  by  aesthetic  princi- 
ples, it  remains  as  true  as  ever  that  only  those  things 
have  been  said  finally  which  have  been  said  per- 
fectly, and  that  this  finished  utterance  is  peculiarly 
the  office  of  poetry,  or  of  what,  for  want  of  some  word 
as  comprehensive  as  the  German  Dichtung,  we  are 
forced  to  call  imaginative  literature.  Indeed,  it  may 
be  said  that,  in  whatever  kind  of  writing,  it  is  style 
alone  that  is  able  to  hold  the  attention  of  the  world 
long.  Let  a  man  be  never  so  rich  in  thought,  if  he  is 
clumsy  in  the  expression  of  it,  his  sinking,  like  that  of 
an  old  Spanish  treasureship,  will  be  hastened  by  the 
very  weight  of  his  bullion,  and  perhaps,  after  the 
lapse  of  a  century,  some  lucky  diver  fishes  up  his 
ingots  and  makes  a  fortune  out  of  him. 

That  Mr.  Howells  gave  unequivocal  indications  of 
possessing  this  fine  quality  interested  us  in  his  modest 
preludings.  Marked,  as  they  no  doubt  were,  by  some 
uncertainty  of  aim  and  indefiniteness  of  thought, 
that  "stinting,"  as  Chaucer  calls  it,  of  the  nightin- 
gale "ere  he  beginneth  sing,"  there  was  nothing  in 
them  of  the  presumption  and  extravagance  which 
young  authors  are  so  apt  to  mistake  for  originality 
[     147     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

and  vigor.  Sentiment  predominated  over  reflection, 
as  was  fitting  in  youth;  but  there  was  a  refinement, 
an  instinctive  reserve  of  phrase,  and  a  felicity  of  epi- 
thet, only  too  rare  in  modern,  and  especially  in  Amer- 
ican writing.  He  was  evidently  a  man  more  eager  to 
make  something  good  than  to  make  a  sensation,  — 
one  of  those  authors  more  rare  than  ever  in  our  day 
of  hand-to-mouth  cleverness,  who  has  a  conscious 
ideal  of  excellence,  and,  as  we  hope,  the  patience  that 
will  at  length  reach  it.  We  made  occasion  to  find  out 
something  about  him,  and  what  we  learned  served  to 
increase  our  interest.  This  delicacy,  it  appeared,  was 
a  product  of  the  rough-and-ready  West,  this  finish 
the  natural  gift  of  a  young  man  with  no  advantage  of 
college-training,  who,  passing  from  the  compositor's 
desk  to  the  editorship  of  a  local  newspaper,  had  been 
his  own  faculty  of  the  humanities.  But  there  are  some 
men  who  are  born  cultivated.  A  singular  fruit,  we 
thought,  of  our  shaggy  democracy,  —  as  interesting 
a  phenomenon  in  that  regard  as  it  has  been  our  for- 
tune to  encounter.  Where  is  the  rudeness  of  a  new 
community,  the  pushing  vulgarity  of  an  imperfect 
civilization,  the  licentious  contempt  of  forms  that 
marks  our  unchartered  freedom,  and  all  the  other 
terrible  things  which  have  so  long  been  the  bugaboos 
of  European  refinement?  Here  was  a  natural  product, 
as  perfectly  natural  as  the  deliberate  attempt  of 
"Walt  Whitman"  to  answer  the  demand  of  native 
[     148     ] 


W.  D.  HOWELLS 

and  foreign  misconception  was  perfectly  artificial. 
Our  institutions  do  not,  then,  irretrievably  doom  us 
to  coarseness  and  to  impatience  of  that  restraining 
precedent  which  alone  makes  true  culture  possible 
and  true  art  attainable.  Unless  we  are  mistaken,  there 
is  something  in  such  an  example  as  that  of  Mr.  How- 
ells  which  is  a  better  argument  for  the  American  so- 
cial and  political  system  than  any  empirical  theories 
that  can  be  constructed  against  it. 

We  know  of  no  single  word  which  will  so  fitly  char- 
acterize Mr.  Howells's  new  volume  about  Venice  as 
"delightful."  The  artist  has  studied  his  subject  for 
four  years,  and  at  last  presents  us  with  a  series  of  pic- 
tures having  all  the  charm  of  tone  and  the  minute 
fidelity  to  nature  which  were  the  praise  of  the  Dutch 
school  of  painters,  but  with  a  higher  sentiment,  a 
more  refined  humor,  and  an  airy  elegance  that  recalls 
the  better  moods  of  Watteau.  We  do  not  remember 
any  Italian  studies  so  faithful  or  the  result  of  such 
continuous  opportunity,  unless  it  be  the  "Roba  di 
Roma"  of  Mr.  Story,  and  what  may  be  found  scat- 
tered in  the  works  of  Henri  Beyle.  But  Mr.  Story's 
volumes  recorded  only  the  chance  observations  of  a 
quick  and  familiar  eye  in  the  intervals  of  a  profession 
to  which  one  must  be  busily  devoted  who  would  rise 
to  the  acknowledged  eminence  occupied  by  their  au- 
thor; and  Beyle's  mind,  though  singularly  acute  and 
penetrating,  had  too  much  of  the  hardness  of  a  man 
[     149     ] 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

of  the  world  and  of  Parisian  cynicism  to  be  alto- 
gether agreeable.  Mr.  Howells,  during  four  years  of 
that  consular  leisure  which  only  Venice  could  make 
tolerable,  devoted  himself  to  the  minute  study  of  the 
superb  prison  to  which  he  was  doomed,  and  his  book 
is  his  "Prigioni."  Venice  has  been  the  university  in 
which  he  has  fairly  earned  the  degree  of  Master. 
There  is,  perhaps,  no  European  city,  not  even  Bruges, 
not  even  Rome  herself,  which,  not  yet  in  ruins,  is  so 
wholly  of  the  past,  at  once  alive  and  turned  to  mar- 
ble, like  the  Prince  of  the  Black  Islands  in  the  story. 
And  what  gives  it  a  pecuUar  fascination  is  that  its 
antiquity,  though  venerable,  is  yet  modem,  and,  so 
to  speak,  continuous;  while  that  of  Rome  belongs 
half  to  a  former  world  and  half  to  this,  and  is  broken 
irretrievably  in  two.  The  glory  of  Venice,  too,  was 
the  achievement  of  her  own  genius,  not  an  inherit- 
ance; and,  great  no  longer,  she  is  more  truly  than 
any  other  city  the  monument  of  her  own  greatness. 
She  is  something  wholly  apart,  and  the  silence  of  her 
watery  streets  accords  perfectly  with  the  spiritual 
mood  which  makes  us  feel  as  if  we  were  passing 
through  a  city  of  dream.  Fancy  now  an  imaginative 
young  man  from  Ohio,  where  the  log-hut  was  but 
yesterday  turned  to  almost  less  enduring  brick  and 
mortar,  set  down  suddenly  in  the  midst  of  all  this  al- 
most immemorial  permanence  of  grandeur.  We  can- 
not think  of  any  one  on  whom  the  impression  would 
I     150     ] 


W.  D.  HOWELIiS 

be  so  strangely  deep,  or  whose  eyes  would  be  so 
quickened  by  the  constantly  recurring  shock  of  un- 
familiar objects.  Most  men  are  poor  observers,  be- 
cause they  are  cheated  into  a  delusion  of  intimacy 
with  the  things  so  long  and  so  immediately  about 
them;  but  surely  we  may  hope  for  something  like 
seeing  from  fresh  eyes,  and  those  too  a  poet's,  when 
they  open  suddenly  on  a  marvel  so  utterly  alien  to 
their  daily  vision  and  so  perdurably  novel  as  Venice. 
Nor  does  Mr.  Howells  disappoint  our  expectation. 
We  have  here  something  like  a  full-length  portrait  of 
the  Lady  of  the  Lagoons. 

We  have  been  struck  in  this  volume,  as  elsewhere 
in  writings  of  the  same  author,  with  the  charm  of  tone 
that  pervades  it.  It  is  so  constant  as  to  bear  witness, 
not  only  to  a  real  gift,  but  to  the  thoughtful  cultiva- 
tion of  it.  Here  and  there  Mr.  Howells  yields  to  the 
temptation  of  execution,  to  which  persons  specially 
feUcitous  in  language  are  liable,  and  pushes  his  ex- 
periments of  expression  to  the  verge  of  being  unidio- 
matic,  in  his  desire  to  squeeze  the  last  drop  of  signifi- 
cance from  words;  but  this  is  seldom,  and  generally 
we  receive  that  unconscious  pleasure  in  reading  him 
which  comes  of  naturalness,  the  last  and  highest  tri- 
umph of  good  writing.  Mr.  Howells,  of  all  men,  does 
not  need  to  be  told  that,  as  wine  of  the  highest  flavor 
and  most  delicate  bouquet  is  made  from  juice  pressed 
out  by  the  unaided  weight  of  the  grapes,  so  in  ex- 
[     151     ] 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

pression  we  are  in  danger  of  getting  something  like 
acridness  if  we  crush  in  with  the  first  sprightly  run- 
nings the  skins  and  kernels  of  words  in  our  vain  hope 
to  win  more  than  we  ought  of  their  color  and  mean- 
ing. But,  as  we  have  said,  this  is  rather  a  temptation 
to  which  he  now  and  then  shows  himself  liable,  than 
a  fault  for  which  he  can  often  be  blamed.  If  a  mind 
open  to  all  poetic  impressions,  a  sensibility  too  sin- 
cere ever  to  fall  into  maudlin  sentimentality,  a  style 
flexible  and  sweet  without  weakness,  and  a  humor 
which,  like  the  bed  of  a  stream,  is  the  support  of  deep 
feeling,  and  shows  waveringly  through  it  in  spots  of 
full  sunshine,  —  if  such  qualities  can  make  a  truly 
deUghtful  book,  then  Mr.  Howells  has  made  one  in 
the  volume  before  us.  And  we  give  him  warning  that 
much  will  be  expected  of  one  who  at  his  years  has 
already  shown  himself  capable  of  so  much. 


EDGAR  A.  POE  i 

The  situation  of  American  literature  is  anomalous. 
It  has  no  centre,  or,  if  it  have,  it  is  like  that  of  the 
sphere  of  Hermes.  It  is  divided  into  many  systems, 
each  revolving  round  its  several  sun,  and  often  pre- 
senting to  the  rest  only  the  faint  glimmer  of  a  milk- 
and-water  way.  Our  capital  city,  unlike  London  or 
Paris,  is  not  a  great  central  heart,  from  which  life  and 
vigor  radiate  to  the  extremities,  but  resembles  more 
an  isolated  umbilicus,  stuck  down  as  near  as  may  be 
to  the  centre  of  the  land,  and  seeming  rather  to  tell 
a  legend  of  former  usefulness  than  to  serve  any  pres- 
ent need.  Boston,  New  York,  Philadelphia,  each  has 
its  literature  almost  more  distinct  than  those  of  the 
different  dialects  of  Germany;  and  the  Young  Queen 
of  the  West  has  also  one  of  her  own,  of  which  some 
articulate  rumor  barely  has  reached  us  dwellers  by 
the  Atlantic. 

Perhaps  there  is  no  task  more  difficult  than  the 
just  criticism  of  cotemporary  literature.  It  is  even 
more  grateful  to  give  praise  where  it  is  needed  than 

1  The  following  notice  of  Mr.  Poe's  life  and  works  was  writ- 
ten at  his  own  request,  and  accompanied  a  portrait  of  him  pub- 
lished in  Graham's  Magazine  for  February,  1845.  It  is  here  [in 
R.  W.  Griswold's  edition  of  Poe's  Works  (1850)]  given  with  a 
few  alterations  and  omissions. 

[      153      ] 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

where  it  is  deserved,  and  friendship  so  often  seduces 
the  iron  stylus  of  justice  into  a  vague  flourish,  that 
she  writes  what  seems  rather  like  an  epitaph  than  a 
criticism.  Yet  if  praise  be  given  as  an  alms,  we  could 
not  drop  so  poisonous  a  one  into  any  man's  hat.  The 
critic's  ink  may  sufifer  equally  from  too  large  an  in- 
fusion of  nutgalls  or  of  sugar.  But  it  is  easier  to  be 
generous  than  to  be  just,  and  we  might  readily  put 
faith  in  that  fabulous  direction  to  the  hiding-place  of 
truth,  did  we  judge  from  the  amount  of  water  which 
we  usually  find  mixed  with  it. 

Remarkable  experiences  are  usually  confined  to 
the  inner  life  of  imaginative  men,  but  Mr.  Poe's  biog- 
raphy displays  a  vicissitude  and  peculiarity  of  inter- 
est such  as  is  rarely  met  with.  The  offspring  of  a  ro- 
mantic marriage,  and  left  an  orphan  at  an  early  age, 
he  was  adopted  by  Mr.  Allan,  a  wealthy  Virginian, 
whose  barren  marriage-bed  seemed  the  warranty  of 
a  large  estate  to  the  young  poet.  Having  received  a 
classical  education  in  England,  he  returned  home 
and  entered  the  University  of  Virginia,  where,  after 
an  extravagant  course,  followed  by  reformation  at 
the  last  extremity,  he  was  graduated  with  the  highest 
honors  of  his  class.  Then  came  a  boyish  attempt  to 
join  the  fortunes  of  the  insurgent  Greeks,  which 
ended  at  St.  Petersburg,  where  he  got  into  difficul- 
ties through  want  of  a  passport,  from  which  he 
was  rescued  by  the  American  consul,  and  sent 
[     154     1 


EDGAR  A.  POE 

home.*  He  now  entered  the  military  academy  at  West 
Point  from  which  he  obtained  a  dismissal  on  hearing 
of  the  birth  of  a  son  to  his  adopted  father,  by  a  second 
marriage,  an  event  which  cut  off  his  expectations  as 
an  heir.  The  death  of  Mr.  Allan,  in  whose  will  his 
name  was  not  mentioned,  soon  after  relieved  him  of 
all  doubt  in  this  regard,  and  he  committed  himself  at 
once  to  authorship  for  a  support.  Previously  to  this, 
however,  he  had  published  (in  1827)  a  small  volume 
of  poems,  which  soon  ran  through  three  editions,  and 
excited  high  expectations  of  its  author's  future  dis- 
tinction in  the  minds  of  many  competent  judges. 

That  no  certain  augury  can  be  drawn  from  a  poet's 
earliest  lispings  there  are  instances  enough  to  prove. 
Shakespeare's  first  poems,  though  brimful  of  vigor 
and  youth  and  picturesqueness,  give  but  a  very  faint 
promise  of  the  directness,  condensation,  and  over- 
flowing moral  of  his  maturer  works.  Perhaps,  how- 
ever, Shakespeare  is  hardly  a  case  in  point,  his  "Ve- 
nus and  Adonis"  having  been  published,  we  believe, 
in  his  twenty-sixth  year.  Milton's  Latin  verses  show 
tenderness,  a  fine  eye  for  nature,  and  a  delicate  ap- 
preciation of  classic  models,  but  give  no  hint  of  the 
author  of  a  new  style  in  poetry.  Pope's  youthful 
pieces  have  all  the  sing-song,  wholly  unrelieved  by 

^  There  is  little  evidence  for  this  story,  which  some  biographers 
have  dismissed  as  a  myth  created  by  Poe  himself.  See  Wood- 
berry's  Poe,  V.  I,  p.  3G7. 

I      155      1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

the  glittering  malignity  and  eloquent  irreligion  of  his 
later  productions.  Collins'  callow  namby-pamby  died 
and  gave  no  sign  of  the  vigorous  and  original  genius 
which  he  afterwards  displayed.  We  have  never 
thought  that  the  world  lost  more  in  the  "marvellous 
boy,"  Chatterton,  than  a  very  ingenious  imitator  of 
obscure  and  antiquated  dulness.  Where  he  becomes 
original  (as  it  is  called)  the  interest  of  ingenuity 
ceases  and  he  becomes  stupid.  Kirke  White's  prom- 
ises were  endorsed  by  the  respectable  name  of  Mr. 
Southey  but  surely  with  no  authority  from  Apollo. 
They  have  the  merit  of  a  traditional  piety,  which,  to 
our  mind,  if  uttered  at  all,  had  been  less  objection- 
able in  the  retired  closet  of  a  diary,  and  in  the  sober 
raiment  of  prose.  They  do  not  clutch  hold  of  the 
memory  with  the  drowning  pertinacity  of  Watts; 
neither  have  they  the  interest  of  his  occasional  sim- 
ple, lucky  beauty.  Bums,  having  fortunately  been 
rescued  by  his  humble  station  from  the  contaminat- 
ing society  of  the  "best  models"  wrote  well  and  natu- 
rally from  the  first.  Had  he  been  unfortunate  enough 
to  have  had  an  educated  taste,  we  should  have  had  a 
series  of  poems  from  which,  as  from  his  letters,  we 
could  sift  here  and  there  a  kernel  from  the  mass  of 
chaff.  Coleridge's  youthful  efforts  give  no  promise 
whatever  of  that  poetical  genius  which  produced  at 
once  the  wildest,  tenderest,  most  original  and  most 
purely  imaginative  poems  of  modem  times.  Byron's 
[      156     ] 


EDGAR  A.  POE 

"Hours  of  Idleness"  would  never  find  a  reader  ex- 
cept from  an  intrepid  and  indefatigable  curiosity.  In 
Wordsworth's  first  preludings  there  is  but  a  dim  fore- 
boding of  the  creator  of  an  era.  From  Southey's  early 
poems,  a  safer  augury  might  have  been  drawn.  They 
show  the  patient  investigator,  the  close  student  of 
history,  and  the  unwearied  explorer  of  the  beauties  of 
predecessors,  but  they  give  no  assurances  of  a  man 
who  should  add  aught  to  stock  of  household  words, 
or  to  the  rarer  and  more  sacred  delights  of  the  fire- 
side or  the  arbor.  The  earliest  specimens  of  Shelley's 
poetic  mind  already,  also,  give  tokens  of  that  ethe- 
real sublimation  in  which  the  spirit  seems  to  soar 
above  the  regions  of  words,  but  leaves  its  body,  the 
verse,  to  be  entombed,  without  hope  of  resurrection, 
in  a  mass  of  them.  Cowley  is  generally  instanced  as  a 
wonder  of  precocity.  But  his  early  insipidities  show 
only  a  capacity  for  rhyming  and  for  the  metrical  ar- 
rangement of  certain  conventional  combinations  of 
words,  a  capacity  wholly  dependent  on  a  delicate 
physical  organization,  and  an  unhappy  memory.  An 
early  poem  is  only  remarkable  when  it  displays  an 
eflfort  of  reason,  and  the  rudest  verses  in  which  we  can 
trace  some  conception  of  the  ends  of  poetry,  are 
worth  all  the  miracles  of  smooth  juvenile  versifica- 
tion. A  schoolboy,  one  would  say,  might  acquire  the 
regular  see-saw  of  Pope  merely  by  an  association 
with  the  motion  of  the  play-ground  tilt. 
[     157     ] 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

Mr.  Poe's  early  productions  show  that  he  could  see 
through  the  verse  to  the  spirit  beneath,  and  that  he 
already  had  a  feeling  that  all  the  life  and  grace  of  the 
one  must  depend  on  and  be  modulated  by  the  will  of 
the  other.  We  call  them  the  most  remarkable  boyish 
poems  that  we  have  ever  read.  We  know  of  none  that 
can  compare  with  them  for  maturity  of  purpose,  and 
a  nice  understanding  of  the  effects  of  language  and 
metre.  Such  pieces  are  only  valuable  when  they  dis- 
play what  we  can  only  express  by  the  contradictory 
phrase  of  innate  experience.  We  copy  one  of  the  shorter 
poems,  written  when  the  author  was  only  fourteen. 
There  is  a  little  dimness  in  the  filling  up,  but  the  grace 
and  symmetry  of  the  outline  are  such  as  few  poets 
ever  attain.  There  is  a  smack  of  ambrosia  about  it. 

TO  HELEN 

Helen,  thy  beauty  is  to  me 

Like  those  Nicean  barks  of  yore. 
That  gently,  o'er  a  perfumed  sea. 

The  weary,  way-worn  wanderer  bore 

To  his  own  native  shore. 

On  desperate  seas  long  wont  to  roam. 
Thy  hyacinth  hair,  thy  classic  face. 

Thy  Naiad  airs  have  brought  me  home 
To  the  glory  that  was  Greece 
And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome. 

Lo!  in  yon  brilliant  window-niche 
How  statue-like  I  see  thee  stand! 

The  agate  lamp  within  thy  hand, 
Ah!  Psyche,  from  the  regions  which 
Are  Holy  Land! 

[      158      ] 


EDGAR  A.  POE 

It  is  the  tendency  of  the  young  poet  that  impresses  us. 
Here  is  no  "withering  scorn,"  no  heart  "blighted" 
ere  it  has  safely  got  into  its  teens,  none  of  the  draw- 
ing-room sans-culottism  which  Byron  had  brought 
into  vogue.  All  is  limpid  and  serene,  with  a  pleasant 
dash  of  the  Greek  Helicon  in  it.  The  melody  of  the 
whole,  too,  is  remarkable.  It  is  not  of  that  kind  which 
can  be  demonstrated  arithmetically  upon  the  tips  of 
the  fingers.  It  is  of  that  finer  sort  which  the  inner  ear 
alone  can  estimate.  It  seems  simple,  like  a  Greek 
column,  because  of  its  perfection.  In  a  poem  named 
"Ligeia,"  under  which  title  he  intended  to  personify 
the  music  of  nature,  our  boy-poet  gives  us  the  follow- 
ing exquisite  picture : 

Ligeia!  Ligeia! 

My  beautiful  one. 
Whose  harshest  idea 

Will  to  melody  run. 
Say,  is  it  thy  wHl, 

On  the  breezes  to  toss. 
Or,  capriciously  still. 

Like  the  lone  albatross. 
Incumbent  on  night. 

As  she  on  the  air. 
To  keep  watch  vnth  delight 

On  the  harmony  there? 

John  Neal,  himself  a  man  of  genius,  and  whose  lyre 
has  been  too  long  capriciously  silent,  appreciated  the 
high  merit  of  these  and  similar  passages,  and  drew 
a  proud  horoscope  for  their  author. 
[     159     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

Mr.  Poe  had  that  indescribable  something  which 
men  have  agreed  to  call  genius.  No  man  could  ever 
tell  us  precisely  what  it  is,  and  yet  there  is  none  who 
is  not  inevitably  aware  of  its  presence  and  its  power. 
Let  talent  writhe  and  contort  itself  as  it  may,  it  has 
no  such  magnetism.  Larger  of  bone  and  sinew  it  may 
be,  but  the  wings  are  wanting.  Talent  sticks  fast  to 
earth,  and  its  most  perfect  works  have  still  one  foot 
of  clay.  Genius  claims  kindred  with  the  very  work- 
ings of  Nature  herself,  so  that  a  sunset  shall  seem 
like  a  quotation  from  Dante  or  Milton,  and  if 
Shakespeare  be  read  in  the  very  presence  of  the  sea 
itself,  his  verses  shall  but  seem  nobler  for  the  sub- 
lime criticism  of  ocean.  Talent  may  make  friends  for 
itself,  but  only  genius  can  give  to  its  creations  the 
divine  power  of  winning  love  and  veneration.  En- 
thusiasm cannot  cling  to  what  itself  is  unenthusiastic, 
nor  will  he  ever  have  disciples  who  has  not  himself 
impulsive  zeal  enough  to  be  a  disciple.  Great  wits  are 
allied  to  madness  only  inasmuch  as  they  are  pos- 
sessed and  carried  away  by  their  demon,  while  talent 
keeps  him,  as  Paracelsus  did,  securely  prisoned  in  the 
pommel  of  its  sword.  To  the  eye  of  genius,  the  veil 
of  the  spiritual  world  is  ever  rent  asunder,  that  it 
may  perceive  the  ministers  of  good  and  evil  who 
throng  continually  around  it.  No  man  of  mere  talent 
ever  flung  his  inkstand  at  the  devil. 

When  we  say  that  Mr.  Poe  had  genius,  we  do  not 
[     160     1 


EDGAR  A.  POE 

mean  to  say  that  he  has  produced  evidence  of  the 
highest.  But  to  say  that  he  possesses  it  at  all  is  to 
say  that  he  needs  only  zeal,  industry,  and  a  reverence 
for  the  trust  reposed  in  him,  to  achieve  the  proudest 
triumphs  and  the  greenest  laurels.  If  we  may  believe 
the  Longinuses  and  Aristotles  of  our  newspapers,  we 
have  quite  too  many  geniuses  of  the  loftiest  order  to 
render  a  place  among  them  at  all  desirable,  whether 
for  its  hardness  of  attainment  or  its  seclusion.  The 
highest  peak  of  our  Parnassus  is,  according,  to  these 
gentlemen,  by  far  the  most  thickly  settled  portion  of 
the  country,  a  circumstance  which  must  make  it  an 
uncomfortable  residence  for  individuals  of  a  poetical 
temperament,  if  love  of  solitude  be,  as  immemorial 
tradition  asserts,  a  necessary  part  of  their  idiosyn- 
crasy. 

Mr.  Poe  has  two  of  the  prime  qualities  of  genius,  a 
faculty  of  vigorous  yet  minute  analysis,  and  a  won- 
derful fecundity  of  imagination.  The  first  of  these 
faculties  is  as  needful  to  the  artist  in  words,  as  a 
knowledge  of  anatomy  is  to  the  artist  in  colors  or  in 
stone.  This  enables  him  to  conceive  truly,  to  maintain 
a  proper  relation  of  parts,  and  to  draw  a  correct  out- 
line, while  the  second  groups,  fills  up,  and  colors. 
Both  of  these  Mr.  Poe  has  displayed  with  singular 
distinctness  in  his  prose  works,  the  last  predomLuat- 
ing  in  his  earlier  tales,  and  the  first  in  his  later  ones. 
In  judging  of  the  merit  of  an  author,  and  assigning 
[     161     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

him  his  niche  among  our  household  gods,  we  have  a 
right  to  regard  him  from  our  own  point  of  view,  and 
to  measure  him  by  our  own  standard.  But,  in  esti- 
mating the  amount  of  power  displayed  in  his  works, 
we  must  be  governed  by  his  own  design,  and,  placing 
them  by  the  side  of  his  own  ideal,  find  how  much  is 
wanting.  We  diflFer  from  Mr.  Poe  in  his  opinions  of 
the  objects  of  art.  He  esteems  that  object  to  be  the 
creation  of  Beauty,  and  perhaps  it  is  only  in  the 
definition  of  that  word  that  we  disagree  with  him. 
But  in  what  we  shall  say  of  his  writings,  we  shall 
take  his  own  standard  as  our  guide.  The  temple  of 
the  god  of  song  is  equally  accessible  from  every  side, 
and  there  is  room  enough  in  it  for  all  who  bring  offer- 
ings, or  seek  an  oracle. 

In  his  tales,  Mr.  Poe  has  chosen  to  exhibit  his 
power  chiefly  in  that  dim  region  which  stretches  from 
the  very  utmost  limits  of  the  probable  into  the  weird 
confines  of  superstition  and  unreality.  He  com- 
bines in  a  very  remarkable  manner  two  faculties 
which  are  seldom  found  united;  a  power  of  influ- 
encing the  mind  of  the  reader  by  the  impalpable 
shadows  of  mystery,  and  a  minuteness  of  detail 
which  does  not  leave  a  pin  or  a  button  unnoticed. 
Both  are,  in  truth,  the  natural  results  of  the  pre- 
dominating quality  of  his  mind,  to  which  we  have 
before  alluded,  analysis.  It  is  this  which  distinguishes 
the  artist.  His  mind  at  once  reaches  forward  to  the 
[     162     I 


EDGAR  A.  POE 

effect  to  be  produced.  Having  resolved  to  bring  about 
certain  emotions  in  the  reader,  he  makes  all  sub- 
ordinate parts  tend  strictly  to  the  common  centre. 
Even  his  mystery  is  mathematical  to  his  own  mind. 
To  him  a;  is  a  known  quantity  all  along.  In  any  pic- 
ture that  he  paints,  he  understands  the  chemical 
properties  of  all  his  colors.  However  vague  some  of 
his  figures  may  seem,  however  formless  the  shadows, 
to  him  the  outline  is  as  clear  and  distinct  as  that  of  a 
geometrical  diagram.  For  this  reason  Mr.  Poe  has  no 
sympathy  with  Mysticism.  The  Mystic  dwells  in 
the  mystery,  is  enveloped  with  it;  it  colors  all  his 
thoughts;  it  affects  his  optic  nerve  especially,  and 
the  commonest  things  get  a  rainbow  edging  from  it. 
Mr.  Poe,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  spectator  ab  extra. 
He  analyzes,  he  dissects,  he  watches 

with  an  eye  serene, 

The  very  pulse  of  the  machine, 

for  such  it  practically  is  to  him,  with  wheels  and  cogs 
and  piston-rods,  all  working  to  produce  a  certain 
end. 

This  analyzing  tendency  of  his  mind  balances  the 
poetical,  and,  by  giving  him  the  patience  to  be 
minute,  enables  him  to  throw  a  wonderful  reality 
into  his  most  unreal  fancies.  A  monomania  he  paints 
with  great  power.  He  loves  to  dissect  one  of  these 
cancers  of  the  mind,  and  to  trace  all  the  subtle  ram- 
ifications of  its  roots.  In  raising  images  of  horror, 
[     163     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

also,  he  has  a  strange  success;  conveymg  to  us  some- 
times by  a  dusky  hint  some  terrible  doubt  which  is 
the  secret  of  all  horror.  He  leaves  to  imagination  the 
task  of  finishing  the  picture,  a  task  to  which  only  she 
is  competent. 

For  much  imaginary  work  was  there; 
Conceit  deceitful,  so  compact,  so  kind. 
That  for  Achilles'  image  stood  his  spear 
Grasped  in  an  armed  hand;  himself  behind 
Was  left  unseen,  save  to  the  eye  of  mind. 

Beside  the  merit  of  conception,  Mr.  Poe*s  writings 
have  also  that  of  form.  His  style  is  highly  finished, 
graceful  and  truly  classical.  It  would  be  hard  to  find 
a  living  author  who  had  displayed  such  varied  pow- 
ers. As  an  example  of  his  style  we  would  refer  to  one 
of  his  tales,  "The  House  of  Usher,"  in  the  first  volume 
of  his  "Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and  Arabesque."  It 
has  a  singular  charm  for  us,  and  we  think  that  no  one 
could  read  it  without  being  strongly  moved  by  its 
serene  and  sombre  beauty.  Had  its  author  written 
nothing  else,  it  would  alone  have  been  enough  to 
stamp  him  as  a  man  of  genius,  and  the  master  of  a 
classic  style.  In  this  tale  occurs,  perhaps,  the  most 
beautiful  of  his  poems. 

The  great  masters  of  imagination  have  seldom 
resorted  to  the  vague  and  the  unreal  as  sources  of 
effect.  They  have  not  used  dread  and  horror  alone, 
but  only  in  combination  with  other  qualities,  as 
means  of  subjugating  the  fancies  of  their  readers. 
[     164     J 


EDGAB  A.  POE 

The  loftiest  muse  has  ever  a  household  and  fireside 
charm  about  her.  Mr.  Poe's  secret  lies  mainly  in  the 
skill  with  which  he  has  employed  the  strange  fas- 
cination of  mystery  and  terror.  In  this  his  success  is 
so  great  and  striking  as  to  deserve  the  name  of  art, 
not  artifice.  We  cannot  call  his  materials  the  noblest 
or  purest,  but  we  must  concede  to  him  the  highest 
merit  of  construction. 

As  a  critic,  Mr.  Poe  was  aesthetically  deficient. 
Unerring  in  his  analysis  of  dictions,  metres,  and 
plots,  he  seemed  wanting  in  the  faculty  of  perceiving 
the  profounder  ethics  of  art.  His  criticisms  are,  how- 
ever, distinguished  for  scientific  precision  and  co- 
herence of  logic.  They  have  the  exactness,  and  at 
the  same  time,  the  coldness  of  mathematical  dem- 
onstrations. Yet  they  stand  in  strikingly  refreshing 
contrast  with  the  vague  generalisms  and  sharp  per- 
sonalities of  the  day.  If  deficient  in  warmth,  they  are 
also  without  the  heat  of  partizanship.  They  are 
especially  valuable  as  illustrating  the  great  truth, 
too  generally  overlooked,  that  analytic  power  is  a 
subordinate  quality  of  the  critic. 

On  the  whole,  it  may  be  considered  certain  that 
Mr.  Poe  has  attained  an  individual  eminence  in  our 
literature,  which  he  will  keep.  He  has  given  proof  of 
power  and  originality.  He  has  done  that  which  could 
only  be  done  once  with  success  or  safety,  and  the  imi- 
tation or  repetition  of  which  would  produce  weariness. 


THACKERAY 

ROUNDABOUT  PAPERS 

The  shock  which  was  felt  in  this  country  at  the 
sudden  death  of  Thackeray  was  a  new  proof,  if  any 
were  wanting,  that  London  is  still  our  social  and 
literary  capital.  Not  even  the  loss  of  Irving  called 
forth  so  universal  and  strong  an  expression  of  sorrow. 
And  yet  it  had  been  the  fashion  to  call  Thackeray  a 
cynic.  We  must  take  leave  to  doubt  whether  Di- 
ogenes himself,  much  less  any  of  his  disciples,  would 
have  been  so  tenderly  regretted.  We  think  there  was 
something  more  in  all  this  than  mere  sentiment  at 
the  startling  extinction  of  a  great  genius.  There 
was  a  universal  feeling  that  we  had  lost  something 
even  rarer  and  better,  —  a  true  man. 

Thackeray  was  not  a  cynic,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  he  was  a  humorist,  and  could  not  have  been  one 
if  he  would.  Your  true  cynic  is  a  sceptic  also;  he  is 
distrustful  by  nature,  his  laugh  is  a  bark  of  selfish 
suspicion,  and  he  scorns  man,  not  because  he  has 
fallen  below  himself,  but  because  he  can  rise  no 
higher.  But  humor  of  the  truest  quality  always  rests 
on  a  foundation  of  belief  in  something  better  than  it 
sees,  and  its  laugh  is  a  sad  one  at  the  awkward  con- 
trast between  man  as  he  is  and  man  as  he  might  be, 
between  the  real  snob  and  the  ideal  image  of  his 
I     166     1 


THACKERAY 

Creator.  Swift  is  our  true  English  cynic,  with  his 
corrosive  sarcasm;  the  satire  of  Thackeray  is  the 
recoil  of  an  exquisite  sensibility  from  the  harsh  touch 
of  life.  With  all  his  seeming  levity,  Thackeray  used 
to  say,  with  the  warmest  sincerity,  that  Carlyle  was 
his  master  and  teacher.  He  had  not  merely  a  smiling 
contempt,  but  a  deadly  hatred,  of  all  manner  of 
shamSy  an  equally  intense  love  for  every  kind  of 
manliness,  and  for  gentlemanliness  as  its  highest 
type.  He  had  an  eye  for  pretension  as  fatally  de- 
tective as  an  acid  for  an  alkali;  wherever  it  fell,  so 
clear  and  seemingly  harmless,  the  weak  spot  was 
sure  to  betray  itself.  He  called  himself  a  disciple  of 
Carlyle,  but  would  have  been  the  first  to  laugh  at 
the  absurdity  of  making  any  comparison  between 
the  playful  heat-lightnings  of  his  own  satire  and  that 
lurid  light,  as  of  the  Divine  wrath  over  the  burning 
cities  of  the  plain,  that  flares  out  on  us  from  the 
profoundest  hmnor  of  modem  times.  Beside  that 
ingenium  perfervidum  of  the  Scottish  seer,  he  was  but 
a  Pail-Mall  Jeremiah  after  all. 

It  is  curious  to  see  how  often  Nature,  original  and 
profuse  as  she  is,  repeats  herself;  how  often,  instead 
of  sending  one  complete  mind  like  Shakespeare,  she 
sends  two  who  are  the  complements  of  each  other,  — 
Fielding  and  Richardson,  Goethe  and  Schiller,  Balzac 
and  George  Sand,  and  now  again  Thackeray  and 
Dickens.  We  are  not  fond  of  comparative  criticism, 
[     167     ] 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

we  mean  of  that  kind  which  brings  forward  the  merit 
of  one  man  as  if  it  depreciated  the  difiFerent  merit  of 
another,  nor  of  supercilious  criticism,  which  measures 
every  talent  by  some  ideal  standard  of  possible  ex- 
cellence, and,  if  it  fall  short,  can  find  nothing  to  ad- 
mire. A  thing  is  either  good  in  itself  or  good  for 
nothing.  Yet  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  contrast  of 
differences  between  two  eminent  intellects  by  which 
we  may  perhaps  arrive  at  a  clearer  perception  of 
what  is  characteristic  in  each.  It  is  almost  impossible, 
indeed,  to  avoid  some  sort  of  parallel  a  la  Plutarch 
between  Thackeray  and  Dickens.  We  do  not  intend 
to  make  out  which  is  the  greater,  for  they  may  be 
equally  great,  though  utterly  unlike,  but  merely  to 
touch  on  a  few  striking  points.  Thackeray,  in  his 
more  elaborate  works,  always  paints  character,  and 
Dickens  single  peculiarities.  Thackeray's  personages 
are  all  men,  those  of  Dickens  personified  oddities. 
The  one  is  an  artist,  the  other  a  caricaturist;  the  one 
pathetic,  the  other  sentimental.  Nothing  is  more  in- 
structive than  the  difference  between  the  illustrations 
of  their  respective  works.  Thackeray's  figures  are 
such  as  we  meet  about  the  streets,  while  the  artists 
who  draw  for  Dickens  invariably  fall  into  the  ex- 
ceptionally grotesque.  Thackeray's  style  is  perfect, 
that  of  Dickens  often  painfully  mannered.  Nor  is  the 
contrast  less  remarkable  in  the  quality  of  character 
which  each  selects.  Thackeray  looks  at  life  from  the 
I     168     1 


THACKERAY 

club-house  window,  Dickens  from  the  reporter's  box 
in  the  police-court.  Dickens  is  certainly  one  of  the 
greatest  comic  writers  that  ever  lived,  and  has  per- 
haps created  more  types  of  oddity  than  any  other. 
His  faculty  of  observation  is  marvellous,  his  variety 
inexhaustible.  Thackeray's  round  of  character  is  very 
limited;  he  repeated  himself  continually,  and,  as  we 
think,  had  pretty  well  emptied  his  stock  of  invention. 
But  his  characters  are  masterpieces,  always  governed 
by  those  average  motives,  and  acted  upon  by  those 
average  sentiments,  which  all  men  have  in  common. 
They  never  act  like  heroes  and  heroines,  but  like  men 
and  women, 

Thackeray's  style  is  beyond  praise,  —  so  easy,  so 
limpid,  showing  everywhere  by  unobtrusive  allusions 
how  rich  he  was  in  modem  culture,  it  has  the  high- 
est charm  of  gentlemanly  conversation.  And  it  was 
natural  to  him,  —  his  early  works  ("The  Great 
Hoggarty  Diamond,"  for  example)  being  as  perfect, 
as  low  in  tone,  as  the  latest.  He  was  in  all  respects 
the  most  finished  example  we  have  of  what  is  called 
a  man  of  the  world.  In  the  pardonable  eulogies  which 
were  uttered  in  the  fresh  grief  at  his  loss  there  was  a 
tendency  to  set  him  too  high.  He  was  even  ranked 
above  Fielding,  —  a  position  which  no  one  would 
have  been  so  eager  in  disclaiming  as  himself.  No,  let 
us  leave  the  old  fames  on  their  pedestals.  Fielding  is 
the  greatest  creative  artist  who  has  written  in  Eng- 
l     169     1 


REVIEWS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES 

lish  since  Shakespeare.  Of  a  broader  and  deeper 
nature,  of  a  larger  brain  than  Thackeray,  his  theme 
is  Man,  as  that  of  the  latter  is  Society.  The  English- 
man with  whom  Thackeray  had  most  in  common 
was  Richard  Steele,  as  these  "Roundabout  Papers'* 
show  plainly  enough.  He  admired  Fielding,  but  he 
loved  Steele. 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 


SWIFT  1 
I 

The  cathedral  of  St.  Patrick's,  dreary  enough  in  it- 
self, seems  to  grow  damper  and  chillier  as  one's  foot- 
steps disturb  the  silence  between  the  grave  of  its 
famous  Dean  and  that  of  Stella,  in  death  as  in  life 
near  yet  divided  from  him,  as  if  to  make  their  memo- 
ries more  inseparable  and  prolong  the  insoluble  prob- 
lem of  their  relation  to  each  other.  Nor  was  there 
wanting,  when  we  made  our  pilgrimage  thither,  a 
touch  of  grim  humor  in  the  thought  that  our  tipsy 
guide  (Clerk  of  the  Works  he  had  dubbed  himself  for 
the  nonce),  as  he  monotonously  recited  his  contradic- 
tory anecdotes  of  the  "suUybrutted  Dane,"  varied  by 
times  with  an  irrelative  hiccough  of  his  own,  was  no 
inapt  type  of  the  ordinary  biographers  of  Swift.  The 
skill  with  which  long  practice  had  enabled  our  cice- 
rone to  turn  these  involuntary  hitches  of  his  discourse 
into  rhetorical  flourishes,  and  well-nigh  to  make 
them  seem  a  new  kind  of  conjunction,  would  have 
been  invaluable  to  the  Dean's  old  servant  Patrick, 
but  in  that  sad  presence  his  grotesqueness  was  as 
shocking  as  the  clown  in  one  of  Shakespeare's  trage- 
dies to  Chdteaubriand.  A  shilling  sent  him  back 
to  the  neighboring  pot-house  whence  a  half-dozen 
^  [A  review  of  The  Life  of  Jonathan  Swift,  by  John  Forster.] 
[      173     1 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

ragged  volunteers  had  summoned  him,  and  we  were 
left  to  our  musings.  One  dominating  thought  shoul- 
dered aside  all  others  —  namely,  how  strange  a 
stroke  of  irony  it  was,  how  more  subtle  even  than 
any  of  the  master's  own,  that  our  most  poignant  as- 
sociation with  the  least  sentimental  of  men  should 
be  one  of  sentiment,  and  that  a  romance  second  only 
to  that  of  Abelard  and  Helolse  should  invest  the 
memory  of  him  who  had  done  more  than  all  others 
together  to  strip  life  and  human  nature  of  their  last 
instinctive  decency  of  illusion.  His  life,  or  such  ac- 
counts as  we  had  of  it,  had  been  full  of  antitheses  as 
startling  as  if  some  malign  enchanter  had  embodied 
one  of  Macaulay's  characters  as  a  conundrum  to 
bewilder  the  historian  himself.  A  generous  miser;  a 
sceptical  believer;  a  devout  scoffer;  a  tender-hearted 
misanthrope;  a  churchman  faithful  to  his  order  yet 
loathing  to  wear  its  uniform;  an  Irishman  hating  the 
Irish,  as  Heine  did  the  Jews,^  because  he  was  one  of 
them,  yet  defending  them  with  the  scornful  fierceness 

*  Lowell  was  mistaken.  Heine  never  lost  his  love  for  the  Jews. 
He  regretted  his  apostasy  and  always  regarded  himself  as  a  Jew, 
and  not  a  Christian.  His  own  genius  was  Hebraic,  and  not,  as 
Matthew  Arnold  thought,  Hellenic.  It  should  be  incidentally 
stated  that  Lowell  had  great  admiration  for  the  Jews.  The  late 
Dr.  Weir  Mitchell  once  told  me  that  Lowell  regretted  that  he 
was  not  a  Jew  and  even  wished  that  he  had  a  Hebraic  nose. 
Several  documents  attest  to  Lowell's  ideas  on  the  subject.  He 
even  claimed  that  his  middle  name  "Russell"  showed  that  he 
had  Jewish  blood.    A.  M. 

[      174      1 


SWIFT 

of  one  who  hated  their  oppressors  more;  a  man  hon- 
est and  of  statesmanlike  mind,  who  lent  himself  to 
the  basest  services  of  party  politics  for  purely  selfish 
ends;  a  poet  whose  predominant  faculty  was  that  of 
disidealizing;  a  master  of  vernacular  style,  in  whose 
works  an  Irish  editor  finds  hundreds  of  faults  of  Eng- 
lish to  correct;  strangest  of  all,  a  middle-aged  clergy- 
man of  brutal  coarseness,  who  could  inspire  two 
young,  beautiful,  and  clever  women,  the  one  with  a 
fruitless  passion  that  broke  her  heart,  the  other  with 
a  love  that  survived  hope  and  faith  to  suck  away  the 
very  sources  of  that  life  whereof  it  was  the  only 
pride  and  consolation.  No  wonder  that  a  new  life  of 
so  problematic  a  personage  as  this  should  b^  awaited 
with  eagerness,  the  more  that  it  was  to  be  illustrated 
with  much  hitherto  unpublished  material  and  was  to 
be  written  by  the  practised  hand  of  Mr.  Forster.  In- 
consistency of  conduct,  of  professed  opinion,  whether 
of  things  or  men,  we  can  understand;  but  an  incon- 
sistent character  is  something  without  example,  and 
which  nature  abhors  as  she  does  false  logic.  Oppor- 
tunity may  develop,  hindrance  may  dwarf,  the  pre- 
vailing set  of  temptation  may  give  a  bent  to  charac- 
ter, but  the  germ  planted  at  birth  can  never  be 
wholly  disnatured  by  circumstance  any  more  than 
soil  or  exposure  can  change  an  oak  into  a  pine.  Char- 
acter is  continuous,  it  is  cumulative,  whether  for 
good  or  ill;  the  general  tenor  of  the  life  is  a  logical 
[     175     1 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

sequence  from  it,  and  a  man  can  always  explain  him- 
self to  himself,  if  not  to  others,  as  a  coherent  whole, 
because  he  always  knows,  or  thinks  he  knows,  the 
value  of  X  in  the  personal  equation.  Were  it  other- 
wise, that  sense  of  conscious  identity  which  alone 
makes  life  a  serious  thing  and  immortality  a  rational 
hope,  would  be  impossible.  It  is  with  the  means  of 
finding  out  this  unknown  quantity  —  in  other  words, 
of  penetrating  to  the  man's  motives  or  his  under- 
standing of  them  —  that  the  biographer  undertakes 
to  supply  us,  and  unless  he  succeed  in  this,  his  rum- 
maging of  old  papers  but  raises  a  new  cloud  of  dust  to 
darken  our  insight. 

K  Mr.  Forster's  mind  had  not  the  penetrative, 
illuminating  quality  of  genius,  he  was  not  without 
some  very  definite  qualifications  for  his  task.  The 
sturdy  temper  of  his  intellect  fits  him  for  a  subject 
which  is  beset  with  pitfalls  for  the  sentimentalizer.  A 
finer  sense  might  recoil  before  investigations  whose 
importance  is  not  at  first  so  clear  as  their  promise  of 
unsavoriness.  So  far  as  Mr.  Forster  has  gone,  we 
think  he  has  succeeded  in  the  highest  duty  of  a  biog- 
rapher: that  of  making  his  subject  interesting  and 
humanly  sympathetic  to  the  reader  —  a  feat  surely 
of  some  difficulty  with  a  professed  cynic  like  Swift. 
He  lets  him  in  the  main  tell  his  own  story  —  a  method 
not  always  trustworthy,  to  be  sure,  but  safer  in 
the  case  of  one  who,  whatever  else  he  may  have 
[     176     ] 


SWIFT 

been,  was  almost  brutally  sincere  when  he  could  be  so 
with  safety  or  advantage.  Still,  it  should  always  be 
borne  in  mind  that  he  could  lie  with  an  air  of  honest 
candor  ifit  to  deceive  the  very  elect.  The  author  of 
the  "Battle  of  the  Books"  (written  in  1697)  tells  us 
in  the  preface  to  the  Third  Part  of  Temple's  "Mis- 
cellanea" (1701)  that  he  "cannot  well  inform  the 
reader  upon  what  occasion  "  the  essay  upon  Ancient 
and  Modem  Learning  "was  writ,  having  been  at 
that  time  in  another  kingdom";  and  the  professed 
confidant  of  a  ministry,  whom  the  Stuart  Papers 
have  proved  to  have  been  in  correspondence  with  the 
Pretender,  puts  on  an  air  of  innocence  (in  his  "En- 
quiry into  the  Behavior  of  the  Queen's  last  Minis- 
try") and  imdertakes  to  convince  us  that  nothing 
could  be  more  absurd  than  to  accuse  them  of  Jacobit- 
ism.  It  may  be,  as  Orrery  asserted,  that  Swift  was 
"employed,  not  trusted,"  but  this  is  hardly  to  be 
reconciled  with  Lewis's  warning  him  on  the  Queen's 
death  to  bum  his  papers,  or  his  own  jest  to  Harley 
about  the  one  being  beheaded  and  the  other  hanged. 
The  fact  is  that,  while  in  certain  contingencies  Swift 
was  as  unscrupulous  a  liar  as  Voltaire,  he  was  natu- 
rally open  and  truthful,  and  showed  himself  to  be  so 
whenever  his  passions  or  his  interest  would  let  him. 
That  Mr.  Forster  should  make  a  hero  of  the  man 
whose  life  he  has  undertaken  to  write  is  both  natural 
and  proper;  for  without  sympathy  there  can  be  no 
I     177     ] 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

right  understanding,  and  a  hearty  admiration  is  alone 
capable  of  that  generosity  in  the  interpretation  of 
conduct  to  which  all  men  have  a  right,  and  which  he 
needs  most  who  most  widely  transcends  the  ordinary 
standards  or  most  resolutely  breaks  with  tradition- 
ary rules.  That  so  virile  a  character  as  Swift  should 
have  been  attractive  to  women  is  not  wonderful,  but 
we  think  Mr.  Forster  has  gone  far  towards  proving 
that  he  was  capable  of  winning  the  deep  and  lasting 
affection  of  men  also.  Perhaps  it  may  not  always  be 
safe  to  trust  implicitly  the  fine  phrases  of  his  corre- 
spondents; for  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Swift  in- 
spired fear  as  well  as  love.  Revengefulness  is  the  great 
and  hateful  blot  on  his  character;  his  brooding  tem- 
per turned  slights  into  injuries,  gave  substance  to 
mere  suspicion,  and  once  in  the  morbid  mood  he  was 
utterly  reckless  of  the  means  of  vengeance.  His  most 
playful  scratch  had  poison  in  it.  His  eye  was  equally 
terrible  for  the  weak  point  of  friend  and  foe.  But  giv- 
ing this  all  the  value  it  may  deserve,  the  weight  of  the 
evidence  is  in  favor  of  his  amiability.  The  testimony 
of  a  man  so  sweet-natured  and  fair-minded  as  Dr. 
Delany  ought  to  be  conclusive,  and  we  do  not  won- 
der that  Mr.  Forster  should  lay  great  stress  upon  it. 
The  depreciatory  conclusions  of  Dr.  Johnson  are 
doubtless  entitled  to  consideration;  but  his  evidence 
is  all  from  hearsay,  and  there  were  properties  in 
Swift  that  aroused  in  him  so  hearty  a  moral  repulsion 
[     178     1 


SWIFT 

as  to  disenable  him  for  an  unprejudiced  opinion.  Ad- 
mirable as  the  rough-and-ready  conclusions  of  his 
robust  understanding  often  are,  he  was  better  fitted 
to  reckon  the  quantity  of  a  man's  mind  than  the 
quality  of  it  —  the  real  test  of  its  value;  and  there  is 
something  almost  comically  pathetic  in  the  good 
faith  with  which  he  applies  his  beer-measure  to 
juices  that  could  fairly  plead  their  privilege  to  be 
gauged  by  the  wine  standard.  Mr.  Forster's  partiality 
qualifies  him  for  a  fairer  judgment  of  Swift  than  any 
which  Johnson  was  capable  of  forming,  or,  indeed, 
would  have  given  himself  the  trouble  to  form. 

But  this  partiality  in  a  biographer,  though  to  be 
allowed  and  even  commended  as  a  quickener  of  in- 
sight, should  not  be  strong  enough  to  warp  his  mind 
from  its  judicial  level.  While  we  think  that  Mr. 
Forster  is  mainly  right  in  his  estimate  of  Swift's 
character,  and  altogether  so  in  insisting  on  trying 
him  by  documentary  rather  than  hearsay  evidence, 
it  is  equally  true  that  he  is  sometimes  betrayed  into 
overestimates,  and  into  positive  statement,  where 
favorable  inference  would  have  been  wiser.  Now  and 
then  his  exaggeration  is  merely  amusing,  as  where  he 
tells  us  that  Swift,  "as  early  as  in  his  first  two  years 
after  quitting  Dublin,  was  accom'plished  in  French" 
the  only  authority  for  such  a  statement  being  a  letter 
of  recommendation  from  Temple  saying  that  he  "had 
some  French"  Such  compulsory  testimonials  are  not 
I     179     ] 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

on  their  voir  dire  any  more  than  epitaphs.  So,  in 
speaking  of  Betty  Jones,  with  whom  in  1689  Swift 
had  a  flirtation  that  alarmed  his  mother,  Mr.  Forster 
assumes  that  she  "was  an  educated  girl"  on  the  sole 
ground,  so  far  as  appears,  of  "her  mother  and  Swift's 
being  cousins."  Swift,  to  be  sure,  thirty  years  later, 
on  receiving  some  letters  from  his  old  sweetheart, 
"suspects  them  to  be  counterfeit"  because  "she 
spells  like  a  kitchen-maid,"  and  this,  perhaps,  may 
be  Mr.  Forster's  authority.  But,  as  the  letters  were 
genuine,  the  inference  should  have  been  the  other 
way.  The  "letters  to  Eliza,"  by  the  way,  which  Swift 
in  1699  directs  Winder,  his  successor  at  Kilroot,  to 
bum,  were  doubtless  those  addressed  to  Betty  Jones. 
Mr.  Forster  does  not  notice  this;  but  that  Swift 
should  have  preserved  them,  or  copies  of  them,  is  of 
some  consequence,  as  tending  to  show  that  they  were 
mere  exercises  in  composition,  thus  confirming  what 
he  says  in  the  remarkable  letter  to  Kendall,  written 
in  1692,  when  he  was  already  off  with  the  old  love 
and  on  with  a  new. 

These  instances  of  the  temptation  which  most  eas- 
ily besets  Mr.  Forster  are  trifles,  but  the  same  lean- 
ing betrays  him  sometimes  into  graver  mistakes  of 
overestimate.  He  calls  Swift  the  best  letter-writer  in 
the  language,  though  Gray,  Walpole,  Cowper,  and 
Lamb  be  in  some  essential  qualities  his  superiors.  He 
praises  his  political  writing  so  extravagantly  that  we 
I     180     ] 


SWIFT 

should  think  he  had  not  read  the  "Examiner,"  were 
it  not  for  the  thoroughness  of  his  work  in  other  re- 
spects. All  that  Swift  wrote  in  this  kind  was  partisan, 
excellently  fitted  to  its  immediate  purpose,  as  we 
might  expect  from  his  imperturbable  good  sense,  but 
by  its  very  nature  ephemeral.  There  is  none  of  that 
reach  of  historical  imagination,  none  of  that  grasp  of 
the  clue  of  fatal  continuity  and  progression,  none  of 
that  eye  for  country  which  divines  the  future  high- 
ways of  events,  that  makes  the  occasional  pam- 
phlets of  Burke,  with  all  their  sobs  of  passionate  sen- 
timent, permanent  acquisitions  of  political  thinking. 
Mr.  Forster  finds  in  Swift's  "Examiners"  all  the 
characteristic  qualities  of  his  mind  and  style,  though 
we  believe  that  a  dispassionate  reader  would  rather 
conclude  that  the  author,  as  we  have  little  doubt  was 
the  fact,  was  trying  all  along  to  conceal  his  personal- 
ity under  a  disguise  of  decorous  commonplace.  In  the 
same  uncritical  way  Mr.  Forster  tells  us  that  "the 
ancients  could  show  no  such  humor  and  satire  as  the 
'Tale  of  a  Tub'  and  the  'Battle  of  the  Books.'"  In 
spite  of  this,  we  shall  continue  to  think  Aristophanes 
and  even  Lucian  clever  writers,  considering  the  rude- 
ness of  the  times  in  which  they  lived.  The  "Tale  of  a 
Tub"  has  several  passages  of  rough-and-tumble  sa- 
tire as  good  as  any  of  their  kind,  and  some  hints  of 
deeper  suggestion,  but  the  fable  is  clumsy  and  the 
execution  unequal  and  disjointed.  In  conception  the 
[     181     1 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

"Battle"  is  cleverer,  and  it  contains  perhaps  the 
most  perfect  apologue  in  the  language,  but  the  best 
strokes  of  satire  in  it  are  personal  (that  of  Dryden's 
helmet,  for  instance),  and  we  enjoy  them  with  an  un- 
easy feeling  that  we  are  accessaries  in  something  like 
foul  play.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  of  Swift's  humor 
generally  that  it  leaves  us  uncomfortable,  and  that  it 
too  often  impregnates  the  memory  with  a  savor  of 
mortal  corruption  proof  against  all  disinfectants. 
Pure  humor  cannot  flow  from  so  turbid  a  source  as 
SdBva  indignatio,  and  if  man  be  so  filthy  and  disgusting 
a  creature  as  Swift  represents  him  to  be,  if  he  be  truly 
"by  nature,  reason,  learning,  blind,"  satire  is  thrown 
away  upon  him  for  reform  and  cruel  as  castigation. 

Mr.  Forster  not  only  rejects  the  story  of  Stella's 
marriage  with  Swift  as  lacking  substantial  evidence, 
but  thinks  that  the  limits  of  their  intercourse  were 
early  fixed  and  never  overpassed.  According  to  him, 
their  relation  was  to  be,  from  the  first,  one  "  of  affec- 
tion, not  desire."  We,  on  the  other  hand,  believe  that 
she  was  the  only  woman  Swift  ever  loved  constantly, 
that  he  wished  and  meant  to  marry  her,  that  he  prob- 
ably did  marry  her,^  but  only  when  all  hope  of  the 
old  open-hearted  confidence  was  gone  forever,  chiefly 
through  his  own  fault,  if  partly  through  her  jealous 
misconception  of  his  relation  to  Vanessa,  and  that  it 

^  Most  of  the  authorities  conclude  that  Swift  never  married 
Stella.   A.  M. 

[      182      ] 


SWIFT 

was  the  sense  of  his  own  weakness,  which  admitted 
of  no  explanation  tolerable  to  an  injured  woman,  and 
entailed  upon  a  brief  folly  all  the  consequences  of 
guilt,  that  more  than  all  else  darkened  his  lonely  de- 
cline with  unavailing  regrets  and  embittered  it  with 
remorseful  self-contempt.  Nothing  could  be  more 
galling  to  a  proud  man  than  the  feeling  that  he  had 
been  betrayed  by  his  vanity.  It  is  commonly  as- 
sumed that  pride  is  incompatible  with  its  weaker 
congener.  But  pride,  after  all,  is  nothing  more  than  a 
stiffened  and  congealed  vanity,  and  melts  back  to  its 
original  ductility  when  exposed  to  the  milder  tem- 
perature of  female  partiality.  Swift  could  not  deny 
himself  the  flattery  of  Vanessa's  passion,  and  not  to 
forbid  was  to  encourage.  He  could  not  bring  himself 
to  administer  in  time  the  only  effectual  remedy,  by 
telling  her  that  he  was  pledged  to  another  woman. 
When  at  last  he  did  tell  her  it  was  too  late;  and  he 
learned,  like  so  many  before  and  since,  that  the  most 
dangerous  of  all  fires  to  play  with  is  that  of  love.  This 
was  the  extent  of  his  crime,  and  it  would  have  been 
none  if  there  had  been  no  such  previous  impediment. 
This  alone  gives  any  meaning  to  what  he  says  when 
Vanessa  declared  her  love: 

Cadenus  felt  within  him  rise 

Shame,  disappointment,  guilt,  surprise. 

Shame  there  might  have  been,  but  surely  no  guilt  on 

any  theory  except  that  of  an  implicit  engagement 

I     183     ] 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

with  Stella.  That  there  was  somethmg  of  the  kind, 
more  or  less  definite,  and  that  it  was  of  some  ten 
years'  standing  when  the  affair  with  Vanessa  came  to 
a  crisis,  we  have  no  doubt.  When  Tisdall  offered  her 
marriage  in  1704,  and  Swift  wrote  to  him  "that  if  my 
fortunes  and  humor  served  me  to  think  of  that  state, 
I  should  certainly,  among  all  persons  on  earth,  make 
your  choice,"  she  accepted  the  implied  terms  and  re- 
jected her  suitor,  though  otherwise  not  unacceptable 
to  her.  She  would  wait.  It  is  true  that  Swift  had  not 
absolutely  committed  himself,  but  she  had  com- 
mitted him  by  dismissing  Tisdall.  Without  assuming 
some  such  tacit  understanding,  his  letters  to  her  are 
unintelligible.  He  repeatedly  alludes  to  his  absence 
from  her  as  only  tolerable  because  it  was  for  her  sake 
no  less  than  his  own,  and  the  details  of  his  petty 
economies  would  be  merely  vulgar  except  to  her  for 
whom  their  motive  gave  them  a  sweetness  of  humor- 
ous pathos.  The  evidence  of  the  marriage  seems  to  be 
as  conclusive  as  that  of  a  secret  can  well  be.  Dr.  De- 
lany,  who  ought  to  have  been  able  to  judge  of  its 
probability,  and  who  had  no  conceivable  motive  of 
misstatement,  was  assured  of  it  by  one  whose  author- 
ity was  Stella  herself.  Mr.  Monck-Berkeley  had  it 
from  the  widow  of  Bishop  Berkeley,  and  she  from  her 
husband,  who  had  it  from  Dr.  Ashe,  by  whom  they 
were  married.  These  are  at  least  unimpeachable  wit- 
nesses. The  date  of  the  marriage  is  more  doubtful, 
[     184     ] 


SWIFT 

but  Sheridan  Is  probably  not  far  wrong  when  he  puts 
it  in  1716.  It  was  simply  a  reparation,  and  no  union 
was  implied  in  it.  Delany  intimates  that  Vanessa,  like 
the  young  Chevalier,  vulgarized  her  romance  in 
drink.  More  than  this,  however,  was  needful  to  palli- 
ate even  in  Swift  the  brutal  allusion  to  her  importu- 
nacy  in  "  Gulliver,"  unless,  as  is  but  too  possible,  the 
passage  in  question  be  an  outbreak  of  ferocious 
spleen  against  her  victorious  rival.  Its  coarseness 
need  not  make  this  seem  impossible,  for  that  was  by 
no  means  a  queasy  age,  and  Swift  continued  on  inti- 
mate terms  with  Lady  Betty  Germaine  after  the  pub- 
lication of  the  nasty  verses  on  her  father.  The  com- 
munication of  the  secret  to  Bishop  Berkeley  (who 
was  one  of  Vanessa's  executors)  may  have  been  the 
condition  of  the  suppressing  Swift's  correspondence 
with  her,  and  would  have  exasperated  him  to  ferocity. 

II 

We  cannot  properly  understand  Swift's  cynicism 
and  bring  it  into  any  relation  of  consistency  with  our 
belief  in  his  natural  amiability  without  taking  his 
whole  life  into  account.  Few  give  themselves  the 
trouble  to  study  his  beginnings,  and  few,  therefore, 
give  weight  enough  to  the  fact  that  he  made  a  false 
start.  He,  the  ground  of  whose  nature  was  an  acrid 
common-sense,  whose  eye  magnified  the  canker  till 
it  effaced  the  rose,  began  as  what  would  now  be 
[     185     ] 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

called  a  romantic  poet.  With  no  mastery  of  verse, 
for  even  the  English  heroic  (a  balancing-pole  which 
has  enabled  so  many  feebler  men  to  walk  the  tick- 
lish rope  of  momentary  success)  was  mieasy  to  him, 
he  essayed  the  Cowleian  Pindarique,  as  the  ad- 
jective was  then  rightly  spelled  with  a  hint  of  Parisian 
rather  than  Theban  origin.  If  the  master  was  but  a 
fresh  example  of  the  disasters  that  wait  upon  every 
new  trial  of  the  flying-machine,  what  could  be  ex- 
pected of  the  disciple  who  had  not  even  the  secret  of 
the  mechanic  wings,  and  who  stuck  solidly  to  the 
earth  while  with  perfect  good  faith  he  went  through 
all  the  motions  of  soaring?  Swift  was  soon  aware  of 
the  ludicrousness  of  his  experiment,  though  he  never 
forgave  Cousin  Dryden  for  being  aware  of  it  also, 
and  the  recoil  in  a  nature  so  intense  as  his  was  sud- 
den and  violent.  He  who  could  not  be  a  poet  if  he 
would,  angrily  resolved  that  he  would  not  if  he  could. 
Full-sail  verse  was  beyond  his  skill,  but  he  could 
manage  the  simpler  fore-and-aft  rig  of  Butler's  octo- 
syllabics. As  Cowleyism  was  a  trick  of  seeing  every- 
thing as  it  was  not,  and  calling  everything  something 
else  than  it  was,  he  would  see  things  as  they  were  — 
or  as,  in  his  sullen  disgust,  they  seemed  to  be  —  and 
call  them  all  by  their  right  names  with  a  resentful 
emphasis.  He  achieved  the  naked  sincerity  of  a 
Hottentot  —  nay,  he  even  went  beyond  it  in  reject- 
ing the  feeble  compromise  of  the  breech-clout.  Not 
[     186     ] 


SWIFT 

only  would  he  be  naked  and  not  ashamed,  but  every- 
body else  should  be  so  with  a  blush  of  conscious  ex- 
posure, and  human  nature  should  be  stripped  of  the 
hypocritical  fig-leaves  that  betrayed  by  attempting 
to  hide  its  identity  with  the  brutes  that  perish.  His 
sincerity  was  not  unconscious,  but  self-willed  and  ag- 
gressive. But  it  would  be  unjust  to  overlook  that  he 
began  with  himself.  He  despised  mankind  because  he 
found  something  despicable  in  Jonathan  Swift,  as 
he  makes  Gulliver  hate  the  Yahoos  in  proportion  to 
their  likeness  with  himself.  He  had  more  or  less  con- 
sciously sacrificed  self-respect  for  that  false  consid- 
eration which  is  paid  to  a  man's  accidents;  he  had 
preferred  the  vain  pomp  of  being  served  on  plate,  as 
no  other  "  man  of  his  level "  in  Ireland  was,  to  being 
happy  with  the  woman  who  had  sacrificed  herself  to 
his  selfishness,  and  the  independence  he  had  won 
turned  out  to  be  only  a  morose  solitude  after  all. 
"Money,"  he  was  fond  of  saying,  "is  freedom,"  but 
he  never  learned  that  self-denial  is  freedom  with  the 
addition  of  self-respect.  With  a  hearty  contempt  for 
the  ordinary  objects  of  human  ambition,  he  could 
yet  bring  himself  for  the  sake  of  them  to  be  the 
obsequious  courtier  of  three  royal  strumpets.  How 
should  he  be  happy  who  had  defined  happiness  to  be 
"the  perpetual  possession  of  being  well  deceived," 
and  who  could  never  be  deceived  himself?  It  may 
well  be  doubted  whether  what  he  himself  calls  "that 
[     187     1 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

pretended  philosophy  which  enters  into  the  depth  of 
things  and  then  comes  gravely  back  with  informa- 
tions and  discoveries  that  in  the  inside  they  are 
good  for  nothing,"  be  of  so  penetrative  an  insight  as 
it  is  apt  to  suppose,  and  whether  the  truth  be  not 
rather  that  to  the  empty  all  things  are  empty.  Swift's 
diseased  eye  had  the  microscopic  quality  of  Gulliver's 
in  Brobdingnag,  and  it  was  the  loathsome  obscenity 
which  this  revealed  in  the  skin  of  things  that  tainted 
his  imagination  when  it  ventured  on  what  was  be- 
neath. But  with  all  Swift's  scornful  humor,  he  never 
made  the  pitiful  mistake  of  his  shallow  friend  Gay 
that  life  was  a  jest.  To  his  nobler  temper  it  was  al- 
ways profoundly  tragic,  and  the  salt  of  his  sarcasm 
was  more  often,  we  suspect,  than  with  most  humor- 
ists distilled  out  of  tears.  The  lesson  is  worth  re- 
membering that  his  apples  of  Sodom,  like  those  of 
lesser  men,  were  plucked  from  boughs  of  his  own 
grafting. 

But  there  are  palliations  for  him,  even  if  the  world 
were  not  too  ready  to  forgive  a  man  everything  if  he 
will  only  be  a  genius.  Sir  Robert  Walpole  used  to  say 
"that  it  was  fortunate  so  few  men  could  be  prime 
ministers,  as  it  was  best  that  few  should  thoroughly 
know  the  shocking  wickedness  of  mankind."  Swift, 
from  his  peculiar  relation  to  two  successive  ministries, 
was  in  a  position  to  know  all  that  they  knew,  and 
perhaps,  as  a  recognized  place-broker,  even  more 
I     188     I 


SWIFT 

than  they  knew,  of  the  selfish  servility  of  men.  He 
had  seen  the  men  who  figure  so  imposingly  in  the 
stage-processions  of  history  too  nearly.  He  knew  the 
real  Jacks  and  Toms  as  they  were  over  a  pot  of  ale 
after  the  scenic  illusion  was  done  with.  He  saw  the 
destinies  of  a  kingdom  controlled  by  men  far  less 
able  than  himself;  the  highest  of  arts,  that  of  politics, 
degraded  to  a  trade  in  places,  and  the  noblest  op- 
portunity, that  of  oflBce,  abused  for  purposes  of  pri- 
vate gain.  His  disenchantment  began  early,  prob- 
ably in  his  intimacy  with  Sir  William  Temple,  in 
whom  (though  he  says  that  all  that  was  good  and 
great  died  with  him)  he  must  have  seen  the  weak 
side  of  solemn  priggery  and  the  pretension  that 
made  a  mystery  of  statecraft.  In  his  twenty-second 
year  he  writes: 

Off  fly  the  vizards  and  discover  all: 
How  plain  I  see  through  the  deceit! 
How  shallow  and  how  gross  the  cheat! 


On  what  poor  engines  move 
The  thoughts  of  monarchs  and  designs  of  states! 
What  petty  motives  rule  their  fates! 

I  to  such  blockheads  set  my  wit! 

I  damn  such  fools!  go,  go,  you're  bit! 

Mr.  Forster's  own  style  (simpler  now  than  when 

he  was  under  the  immediate  influence  of  Dickens,  if 

more  sUpshod  than  when  repressed  by  Landor)  is 

not  in  essentials  better  or  worse  than  usual.  It  is  not 

[     189     ] 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

always  clear  nor  always  idiomatic.  On  page  120  he 
tells  us  that  "  Scott  did  not  care  to  enquire  if  it  was 
likely  that  stories  of  the  kind  referred  to  should  have 
contributed  to  form  a  character,  or  if  it  were  not 
likelier  still  that  they  had  grown  and  settled  round  a 
character  already  famous  as  well  as  formed."  Not  to 
speak  of  the  confusion  of  moods  and  tenses,  the 
phrase  "to  form  a  character"  has  been  so  long  ap- 
propriated to  another  meaning  than  that  which  it 
has  here,  that  the  sense  of  the  passage  vacillates  un- 
pleasantly. He  tells  us  that  Swift  was  "under  engage- 
ment to  Will  Frankland  to  christen  the  baby  his  wife 
is  near  bringing  to  bed."  Parthenogenesis  is  a  simple 
matter  to  this.  And  why  Will  Frankland,  Joe  Beau- 
mont, and  the  like?  We  cannot  claim  so  much  in- 
timacy with  them  as  Swift,  and  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury might  be  allowed  to  stand  a  little  on  its  dignity. 
If  Mr.  Forster  had  been  quoting  the  journal  to  Stella, 
there  would  be  nothing  to  say  except  that  Swift  took 
liberties  with  his  friends  in  writing  to  her  which  he 
would  not  have  ventured  on  before  strangers.  In  the 
same  odd  jargon,  which  the  English  journals  are 
fond  of  calling  American,  Mr.  Forster  says  that 
"Tom  [Leigh]  was  not  popular  with  Swift."  Mr. 
Forster  is  not  only  no  model  for  contemporary  Eng- 
lish, but  (what  is  more  serious)  sometimes  mistakes 
the  meaning  of  words  in  Swift's  day,  as  when  he 
explains  that  "strongly  engaged"  meant  "inter- 
[     190     ] 


SWIFT 

ceded  with  or  pressed."  It  meant  much  more  than 
that,  as  could  easily  be  shown  from  the  writings  of 
Swift  himself. 

All  the  earlier  biographers  of  Swift  Mr.  Forster 
brushes  contemptuously  aside,  though  we  do  not 
find  much  that  is  important  in  his  own  biography 
which  industry  may  not  hit  upon  somewhere  or 
other  in  the  confused  narrative  of  Sheridan,  for 
whom  and  for  his  sources  of  information  he  shows  a 
somewhat  unjust  contempt.  He  goes  so  far  as  some- 
times to  discredit  anecdotes  so  thoroughly  char- 
acteristic of  Swift  that  he  cannot  resist  copying  them 
himself.  He  labors  at  needless  length  the  question  of 
Swift's  standing  in  college,  and  seems  to  prove  that 
it  was  not  contemptible,  though  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  contrary  opinion  was  founded  on 
Swift's  own  assertion,  often  repeated.  We  say  he 
seems  to  prove  it,  for  we  are  by  no  means  satisfied 
which  of  the  two  Swifts  on  the  college  list,  of  which 
a  facsimile  is  given,  is  the  future  Dean.  Mr.  Forster 
assumes  that  the  names  are  ranked  in  the  order  of 
seniority,  but  they  are  more  likely  to  have  been 
arranged  alphabetically,  in  which  case  Jonathan 
would  have  preceded  Thomas,  and  at  best  there  is 
little  to  choose  between  three  mediocriters  and  one 
male,  one  bene,  and  one  negligenter.  The  document, 
whatever  we  may  think  of  its  importance,  has  been 
brought  to  light  by  Mr.  Forster.  Of  his  other  mate- 
[     191     ] 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

rials  hitherto  unpublished,  the  most  important  is  a 
letter  proving  that  Swift's  Whig  friends  did  their 
best  to  make  him  a  bishop  in  1707.  This  shows  that 
his  own  later  account  of  the  reasons  of  his  change 
from  Whig  to  Tory,  if  not  absolutely  untrue,  is  at 
least  unjust  to  his  former  associates,  and  had  been 
shaped  to  meet  the  charge  of  inconsistency  if  not  of 
desertion  to  the  enemy.  Whatever  the  motives  of  his 
change,  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  convince  a 
sincere  Whig  of  their  honesty,  and  in  spite  of  Mr. 
Forster's  assertion  that  Addison  continued  to  love 
and  trust  him  to  the  last,  we  do  not  believe  that 
there  was  any  cordiality  in  their  intercourse  after 
1710.  No  one  familiar  with  Swift's  manner  of  think- 
ing will  deem  his  political  course  of  much  import  in 
judging  of  his  moral  character.  At  the  bottom  of  his 
heart  he  had  an  impartial  contempt  for  both  parties, 
and  a  firm  persuasion  that  the  aims  of  both  were 
more  or  less  consciously  selfish.  Even  if  sincere,  the 
matters  at  issue  between  them  were  as  despicable  to 
a  sound  judgment  as  that  which  divided  the  Big  and 
Little-endians  in  Lilliput.  With  him  the  question 
was  simply  one  between  men  who  galled  his  pride 
and  men  who  flattered  it.  Sunderland  and  Somers 
treated  him  as  a  serviceable  inferior;  Harley  and 
Bolingbroke  had  the  wit  to  receive  him  on  a  footing 
of  friendship.  To  him  they  were  all,  more  or  less  in- 
differently, rounds  in  the  ladder  by  which  he  hoped 
I     192     1 


SWIFT 

to  climb.  He  always  claimed  to  have  been  a  con- 
sistent Old  Whig  —  that  is,  as  he  understood  it,  a 
High-Churchman  who  accepted  the  Revolution  of 
1688.  This,  to  be  sure,  was  not  quite  true,  but  it 
could  not  have  been  hard  for  a  man  who  prided  him- 
self on  a  Cavalier  grandfather,  and  whose  first  known 
verses  were  addressed  to  the  non-juring  primate 
Sancroft  after  his  deprivation,  to  become  first  a 
Tory  and  then  a  conniver  at  the  restoration  of  the 
Stuarts  as  the  best  device  for  preventing  a  foreign 
succession  and  an  endless  chance  of  civil  war.  A  man 
of  Swift's  way  of  thinking  would  hardly  have  balked 
at  the  scruple  of  creed,  for  he  would  not  have  deemed 
it  possible  that  the  Pretender  should  have  valued  a 
kingdom  at  any  lower  rate  than  his  great-grand- 
father had  done  before  him. 

The  more  important  part  of  Mr.  Forster's  fresh 
material  is  to  come  in  future  volumes,  if  now,  alas! 
we  are  ever  to  have  them.  For  some  of  what  he  gives 
us  in  this  we  can  hardly  thank  him.  One  of  the  manu- 
scripts he  has  unearthed  is  the  original  version  of 
"Baucis  and  Philemon"  as  it  was  before  it  had 
passed  under  the  criticism  of  Addison.  He  seems  to 
think  it  in  some  respects  better  than  the  revised 
copy,  though  in  our  judgment  it  entirely  justifies  the 
wisdom  of  the  critic  who  counselled  its  curtailment 
and  correction.  The  piece  as  we  have  hitherto  had  it 
comes  as  near  poetry  as  anything  Swift  ever  wrote 
[     193     ] 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

except  "Cadenus  and  Vanessa,"  though  neither  of 
them  aspires  above  the  region  of  cleverness  and 
fancy.  Indeed,  it  is  misleading  to  talk  of  the  poetry 
of  one  whose  fatal  gift  was  an  eye  that  disidealized. 
But  we  are  not  concerned  here  with  the  discussion  of 
Swift's  claim  to  the  title  of  poet.  What  we  are  con- 
cerned about  is  to  protest  in  the  interests  of  good 
literature  against  the  practice,  now  too  common,  of 
hunting  out  and  printing  what  the  author  would 
doubtless  have  burned.  It  is  unfair  to  the  dead  writer 
and  the  living  reader  by  disturbing  that  unitary  im- 
pression which  every  good  piece  of  work  aims  at 
making,  and  is  sure  to  make,  only  in  proportion  to 
the  author's  self-denial  and  his  skill  in 

The  last  and  greatest  art,  the  art  to  blot. 

We  do  not  wish,  nor  have  we  any  right  to  know, 
those  passages  through  which  the  castigating  pen 
has  been  drawn. 

Mr.  Forster  may  almost  claim  to  have  rediscovered 
Swift's  journals  to  Esther  Johnson,  to  such  good 
purpose  has  he  used  them  in  giving  life  and  light 
to  his  narrative.  He  is  certainly  wrong,  however,  in 
saying  to  the  disparagement  of  former  editors  that 
the  name  Stella  was  not  invented  "till  long  after  all 
the  letters  were  written."  This  statement,  improb- 
able in  itself  as  respects  a  man  who  forthwith  refined 
Betty,  Waring,  and  Vanhomrigh  into  Eliza,  Varina, 
[     194     ] 


SWIFT 

and  Vanessa,  is  refuted  by  a  passage  in  the  jour- 
nal of  14th  October,  1710,  printed  by  Mr.  Forster 
himself.  At  least,  we  know  not  what  "Stellakins" 
means  unless  it  be  "little  Stella."  The  value  of  these 
journals  for  their  elucidation  of  Swift's  character 
cannot  be  overestimated,  and  Mr,  Forster  is  quite 
right  in  insisting  upon  the  importance  of  the  "little 
language,"  though  we  are  by  no  means  sure  that  he 
is  always  so  in  his  interpretation  of  the  cipher.  It  is 
quite  impossible,  for  instance,  that  ME  can  stand 
for  Madam  Elderly,  and  so  for  Dingley.  It  is  cer- 
tainly addressed,  like  the  other  endearing  epithets, 
to  Esther  Johnson,  and  may  mean  My  Esther  or 
even  Marry  Esther,  for  anything  we  know  to  the 
contrary. 

Mr.  Forster  brings  down  his  biography  no  farther 
than  the  early  part  of  1710,  so  that  we  have  no  means 
of  judging  what  his  opinion  would  be  of  the  conduct 
of  Swift  during  the  three  years  that  preceded  the 
death  of  Queen  Anne.  But  he  has  told  us  what  he 
thinks  of  his  relations  with  Esther  Johnson;  and  it 
is  in  them,  as  it  seems  to  us,  that  we  are  to  seek  the 
key  to  the  greater  part  of  what  looks  most  enig- 
matical in  his  conduct.  At  first  sight,  it  seems  alto- 
gether unworthy  of  a  man  of  Swift's  genius  to  waste 
so  much  of  it  and  so  many  of  the  best  years  of  his 
life  in  a  sordid  struggle  after  preferment  in  the  church 
—  a  career  in  which  such  selfish  ambitions  look  most 
[      195     1 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

out  of  place.  How  much  better  to  have  stayed  quietly 
at  Laracor  and  written  immortal  works!  Very  good: 
only  that  was  not  Swift's  way  of  looking  at  the  mat- 
ter, who  had  little  appetite  for  literary  fame,  and  all 
of  whose  immortal  progeny  were  begotten  of  the 
moment's  overmastering  impulse,  were  thrown  name- 
less upon  the  world  by  their  father,  and  survived 
only  in  virtue  of  the  vigor  they  had  drawn  from  his 
stalwart  loins.  But  how  if  Swift's  worldly  aspirations, 
and  the  intrigues  they  involved  him  in,  were  not 
altogether  selfish?  How  if  he  was  seeking  advance- 
ment, in  part  at  least,  for  another,  and  that  other  a 
woman  who  had  sacrificed  for  him  not  only  her 
chances  of  domestic  happiness,  but  her  good  name? 
to  whom  he  was  bound  by  gratitude?  and  the  hope 
of  repairing  whose  good  fame  by  making  her  his  own 
was  so  passionate  in  that  intense  nature  as  to  justify 
any  and  every  expedient,  and  make  the  patronage  of 
those  whom  he  felt  to  be  his  inferiors  endurable  by 
the  proudest  of  men?  We  believe  that  this  was  the 
truth,  and  that  the  woman  was  Stella.  No  doubt 
there  were  other  motives.  Coming  to  manhood  with 
a  haughtiness  of  temper  that  was  almost  savage,  he 
had  forced  himself  to  endure  the  hourly  humiliation 
of  what  could  not  have  been,  however  Mr.  Forster 
may  argue  to  the  contrary,  much  above  domestic 
servitude.  This  experience  deepened  in  him  the  pre- 
vailing passions  of  his  life,  first  for  independence  and 
[     196     1 


SWIFT 

next  for  consideration,  the  only  ones  which  could, 
and  in  the  end  perhaps  did,  obscure  the  memory  and 
hope  of  Stella.  That  he  should  have  longed  for  Lon- 
don with  a  persistency  that  submitted  to  many  a 
rebuff  and  overlived  continual  disappointment  will 
seem  childish  only  to  those  who  do  not  consider  that 
it  was  a  longing  for  life.  It  was  there  only  that  his 
mind  could  be  quickened  by  the  society  and  spur  of 
equals.  In  Dublin  he  felt  it  dying  daily  of  the  in- 
anition of  inferior  company.  His  was  not  a  nature, 
if  there  be  any  such,  that  could  endure  the  solitude 
of  supremacy  without  impair,  and  he  foreboded  with 
reason  a  Tiberian  old  age. 

This  certainly  is  not  the  ordinary  temper  of  a 
youth  on  whom  the  world  is  just  opening.  In  a  letter 
to  Pope,  written  in  1725,  he  says,  "  I  desire  that  you 
and  all  my  friends  will  take  a  special  care  that  my 
disaffection  to  the  world  may  not  be  imputed  to  my 
age;  for  I  have  credible  witnesses  ready  to  depose 
that  it  hath  never  varied  from  the  twenty-first  to  the 
fifty-eighth  year  of  my  age."  His  contempt  for  man- 
kind would  not  be  lessened  by  his  knowledge  of  the 
lying  subterfuges  by  which  the  greatest  poet  of  his 
age  sought  at  once  to  gratify  and  conceal  his  own 
vanity,  nor  by  listening  to  the  professions  of  its 
cleverest  statesman  that  he  liked  planting  cabbages 
better  than  being  prime  minister.  How  he  must  have 
laughed  at  the  unconscious  parody  when  his  old 
[     197     1 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

printer  Barber  wrote  to  him  in  the  same  strain  of 
philosophic  relief  from  the  burthensome  glories  of 
lord-mayoralty! 

Nay,  he  made  another  false  start,  and  an  irrep- 
arable one,  in  prose  also  with  the  "Tale  of  a  Tub." 
Its  levity,  if  it  was  not  something  worse,  twice 
balked  him  of  the  mitre  when  it  seemed  just  within 
his  reach.  Justly  or  not,  he  had  the  reputation  of 
scepticism.  Mr.  Forster  would  have  us  believe  him 
devout,  but  the  evidence  goes  no  further  than  to 
prove  him  ceremonially  decorous.  Certain  it  is  that 
his  most  intimate  friends,  except  Arbuthnot,  were 
free-thinkers,  and  wrote  to  him  sometimes  in  a  tone 
that  was  at  least  odd  in  addressing  a  clergyman. 
Probably  the  feeling  that  he  had  made  a  mistake  in 
choosing  a  profession  which  was  incompatible  with 
success  in  politics,  and  with  perfect  independence  of 
mind,  soured  him  even  more  than  his  disappointed 
hopes.  He  saw  Addison  a  secretary  of  state  and  Prior 
an  ambassador,  while  he  was  bubbled  (as  he  would 
have  put  it)  with  a  shabby  deanery  among  savages. 
Perhaps  it  was  not  altogether  his  clerical  character 
that  stood  in  his  way.  A  man's  little  faults  are  more 
often  the  cause  of  his  greatest  miscarriages  than  he 
is  able  to  conceive,  and  in  whatever  respects  his  two 
friends  might  have  been  his  inferiors,  they  certainly 
had  the  advantage  of  him  in  that  savoir  vivre  which 
makes  so  large  an  element  of  worldly  success.  In 
[     198     1 


SWIFT 

judging  him,  however,  we  must  take  into  account 
that  his  first  literary  hit  was  made  when  he  was 
already  thirty-seven,  with  a  confirmed  bias  towards 
moody  suspicion  of  others  and  distrust  of  himself. 

The  reaction  in  Swift's  temper  and  ambition  told 
with  the  happiest  effect  on  his  prose.  For  its  own 
purposes,  as  good  working  English,  his  style  (if  that 
may  be  called  so  whose  chief  success  was  that  it  had 
no  style  at  all),  has  never  been  matched.  It  has  been 
more  praised  than  studied,  or  its  manifest  short- 
comings, its  occasional  clumsiness,  its  want  of  har- 
mony and  of  feeling  for  the  finer  genialities  of 
language,  would  be  more  often  present  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  those  who  discourse  about  it  from  a 
superficial  acquaintance.  With  him  language  was  a 
means  and  not  an  end.  If  he  was  plain  and  even 
coarse,  it  was  from  choice  rather  than  because  he 
lacked  delicacy  of  perception;  for  in  badinage,  the 
most  ticklish  use  to  which  words  can  be  put,  he  was 
a  master. 


PLUTARCH'S  MORALS  i 

Plutarch  is  perhaps  the  most  eminent  example  of 
how  strong  a  hold  simple  good  humor  and  good 
sense  lay  upon  the  affections  of  mankind.  Not  a 
man  of  genius  or  heroism  himself,  his  many  points 
of  sympathy  with  both  make  him  an  admirable  con- 
ductor of  them  in  that  less  condensed  form  which 
is  more  wholesome  and  acceptable  to  the  average 
mind.  Of  no  man  can  it  be  more  truly  said  that,  if 
not  a  rose  himself,  he  had  lived  all  his  days  in  the 
rose's  neighborhood.  Such  is  the  delightful  equable- 
ness of  his  temperament  and  his  singular  talent  for 
reminiscence,  so  far  is  he  always  from  undue  heat 
while  still  susceptible  of  so  much  enthusiasm  as  shall 
not  disturb  digestion,  that  he  might  seem  to  have 
been  bom  middle-aged.  Few  men  have  so  amicably 
combined  the  love  of  a  good  dinner  and  of  the  higher 
morality.  He  seems  to  have  comfortably  solved  the 
problem  of  having  your  cake  and  eating  it,  at  which 
the  ascetic  interpreters  of  Christianity  teach  us  to 
despair.  He  serves  us  up  his  worldly  wisdom  in  a 
sauce  of  Plato,  and  gives  a  kind  of  sensuous  relish  to 
the  disembodied  satisfactions  of  immortality.  He  is  a 
better  Christian  than  many  an  orthodox  divine.  If  he 

^  [A  review  of  the  English  translation  edited  by  William  W. 
Goodwin  with  an  Introduction  by  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.] 

[      200      ] 


PLUTARCH'S  MORALS 

do  not,  like  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  love  to  lose  himself 
in  an  0,  altitudol  yet  the  sky-piercing  peaks  and 
snowy  solitudes  of  ethical  speculation  loom  always 
on  the  horizon  about  the  sheltered  dwelling  of  his 
mind,  and  he  continually  gets  up  from  his  books  to 
rest  and  refresh  his  eyes  upon  them.  He  seldom  in- 
vites us  to  alpine-climbing,  and  when  he  does,  it  is  to 
some  warm  nook  like  the  Jardin  on  Mont  Blanc,  a 
parenthesis  of  homely  summer  nestled  amid  the  sub- 
lime nakedness  of  snow.  If  he  glance  upward  at  be- 
coming intervals  to  the  "primal  duties,"  he  turns 
back  with  a  settled  predilection  to  the  "  sympathies 
that  are  nestled  at  the  feet  like  flowers."  But  it  is 
within  his  villa  that  we  love  to  be  admitted  to  him 
and  to  enjoy  that  garrulity  which  we  forgive  more 
readily  in  the  mother  of  the  muses  than  in  any  of  her 
daughters,  unless  it  be  Clio,  who  is  most  like  her.  If 
we  are  in  the  library,  he  is  reminded  of  this  or  that 
passage  in  a  favorite  author,  and,  going  to  the 
shelves,  takes  down  the  volume  to  read  it  aloud  with 
decorous  emphasis.  If  we  are  in  the  atrium  (where  we 
like  him  best)  he  has  an  anecdote  to  tell  of  all  the 
great  Greeks  and  Romans  whose  busts  or  statues  are 
ranged  about  us,  and  who  for  the  first  time  soften 
from  their  marble  alienation  and  become  human.  It 
is  this  that  makes  him  so  amiable  a  moralist  and 
brings  his  lessons  home  to  us.  He  does  not  preach  up 
any  remote  and  inaccessible  virtue,  but  makes  all  his 
[     201     ] 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

lessons  of  magnanimity,  self-devotion,  patriotism, 
seem  neighborly  and  practicable  to  us  by  an  example 
which  associates  them  with  our  common  humanity. 
His  higher  teaching  is  theosophy  with  no  taint  of 
theology.  He  is  a  pagan  Tillotson  disencumbered  of 
the  archiepiscopal  robes,  a  practical  Christian  unbe- 
wildered  with  doctrinal  punctilios.  This  is  evidently 
what  commended  him  as  a  philosopher  to  Montaigne, 
as  may  be  inferred  from  some  hints  which  follow  im- 
mediately upon  the  comparison  between  Seneca  and 
Plutarch  in  the  essay  on  "Physiognomy."  After 
speaking  of  some  "escripts  encores  plus  reverez,"  he 
asks,  in  his  idiomatic  way,  "a  quoy  faire  nous  allons 
nous  gendarmant  par  ces  efforts  de  la  science?" 
More  than  this,  however,  Montaigne  liked  him  be- 
cause he  was  good  talk,  as  it  is  called,  a  better  compan- 
ion than  writer.  Yet  he  is  not  without  passages  which 
are  noble  in  point  of  mere  style.  Landor  remarks  this 
in  the  conversation  between  Johnson  and  Tooke, 
where  he  makes  Tooke  say:  "Although  his  style  is 
not  valued  by  the  critics,  I  could  inform  them  that 
there  are  in  Plutarch  many  passages  of  exquisite 
beauty,  in  regard  to  style,  derived  perhaps  from  au- 
thors much  more  ancient."  But  if  they  are  borrowed, 
they  have  none  of  the  discordant  effect  of  the  pur- 
pureus  pannus,  for  the  warm  sympathy  of  his  nature 
assimilates  them  thoroughly  and  makes  them  his 
own.  Oddly  enough,  it  is  through  his  memory  that 
[     202     ] 


PLUTARCH'S  MORALS 

Plutarch  is  truly  original.  Who  ever  remembered  so 
much  and  yet  so  well?  It  is  this  selectness  (without 
being  overfastidious)  that  gauges  the  natural  eleva- 
tion of  his  mind.  He  is  a  gossip,  but  he  has  supped 
with  Plato  or  sat  with  Alexander  in  his  tent  to  bring 
away  only  memorable  things.  We  are  speaking  of 
him,  of  course,  at  his  best.  Many  of  his  essays  are 
trivial,  but  there  is  hardly  one  whose  sands  do  not 
glitter  here  and  there  with  the  proof  that  the  stream 
of  his  thought  and  experience  has  flowed  down 
through  auriferous  soil.  "We  sail  on  his  memory  into 
the  ports  of  every  nation,"  says  Mr.  Emerson  ad- 
mirably in  his  Introduction  to  Goodwin's  Plutarch's 
"Morals."  No  doubt  we  are  becalmed  pretty  often, 
and  yet  our  old  skipper  almost  reconciles  us  with  our 
dreary  isolation,  so  well  can  he  beguile  the  time, 
when  he  chooses,  with  anecdote  and  quotation. 

It  would  hardly  be  extravagant  to  say  that  this  de- 
lightful old  proser,  in  whom  his  native  Boeotia  is  only 
too  apparent  at  times,  and  whose  mind,  in  some  re- 
spects, was  strictly  provincial,  had  been  more  opera- 
tive (if  we  take  the  "Lives"  and  the  "Morals"  to- 
gether) in  the  thought  and  action  of  men  than  any 
other  single  author,  ancient  or  modern.  And  on  the 
whole  it  must  be  allowed  that  his  influence  has  been 
altogether  good,  has  insensibly  enlarged  and  human- 
ized his  readers,  winning  them  over  to  benevolence, 
moderation,  and  magnanimity.  And  so  wide  was  his 
[     203     1 


TWO  GREAT  AUTHORS 

own  curiosity  that  they  must  be  few  who  shall  not 
find  somewhat  to  their  purpose  in  his  discursive 
pages.  For  he  was  equally  at  home  among  men  and 
ideas,  open-eared  to  the  one  and  open-minded  to  the 
other.  His  influence,  too,  it  must  be  remembered, 
begins  earlier  than  that  of  any  other  ancient  author 
except  iEsop.  To  boys  he  has  always  been  the  Rob- 
inson Crusoe  of  classic  antiquity,  making  what  had 
hitherto  seemed  a  remote  island  sequestered  from 
them  by  a  trackless  flood  of  years,  living  and  real. 
Those  obscure  solitudes  which  their  imagination  had 
peopled  with  spectral  equestrian  statues,  are  rescued 
by  the  sound  of  his  cheery  voice  as  part  of  the  famil- 
iar and  daylight  world.  We  suspect  that  Agesilaus  on 
his  hobby-horse  first  humanized  antiquity  for  most 
of  us.  Here  was  the  human  footprint  which  persuaded 
us  that  the  past  was  inhabited  by  creatures  like 
ourselves. 


A  PLEA  FOR  FREEDOM  FROM  SPEECH 
AND  FIGURES  OF   SPEECH-MAKERS 


A  PLEA  FOR  FREEDOM  FROM  SPEECH 
AND  FIGURES  OF  SPEECH-MAKERS 

I  MUST  beg  allowance  to  use  the  first  person  singular. 
I  cannot,  like  old  Weller,  spell  myself  with  a  We. 
Ours  is,  I  believe,  the  only  language  that  has  shown 
so  much  sense  of  the  worth  of  the  individual  (to  him- 
self) as  to  erect  the  first  personal  pronoun  into  a  kind 
of  votive  column  to  the  dignity  of  human  nature. 
Other  tongues  have,  or  pretend,  a  greater  modesty. 

I 

What  a  noble  letter  it  is !  In  it  every  reader  sees  him- 
self as  in  a  glass.  As  for  me,  without  my  I*s,  I  should 
be  as  poorly  off  as  the  great  mole  of  Hadrian,  which, 
being  the  biggest,  must  be  also,  by  parity  of  reason, 
the  blindest  in  the  world.  When  I  was  in  college,  I 
confess  I  always  liked  those  passages  best  in  the 
choruses  of  the  Greek  drama  which  were  well  sprin- 
kled with  ai  at,  they  were  so  grandly  simple.  The 
force  of  great  men  is  generally  to  be  found  in  their 
intense  individuality,  —  in  other  words,  it  is  all  in 
their  I.  The  merit  of  this  essay  will  be  similar. 

What  I  was  going  to  say  is  this. 

My  mind  has  been  much  exercised  of  late  on  the 
subject  of  two  epidemics,  which,  showing  themselves 
formerly  in  a  few  sporadic  cases,  have  begun  to  set  in 
[     207     ] 


A  PLEA  FOB  FREEDOM  FROM  SPEECH 

with  the  violence  of  the  cattle-disease:  I  mean  Elo- 
quence and  Statuary.  They  threaten  to  render  the 
country  unfit  for  human  habitation,  except  by  the 
Deaf  and  Blind.  We  had  hitherto  got  on  very  well  in 
Chesumpscot,  having  caught  a  trick  of  silence,  per- 
haps from  the  fish  which  we  cured,  more  medicorum, 
by  laying  them  out.  But  this  summer  some  misguided 
young  men  among  us  got  up  a  lecture-association.  Of 
course  it  led  to  a  general  quarrel;  for  every  pastor  in 
the  town  wished  to  have  the  censorship  of  the  list  of 
lecturers.  A  certain  number  of  the  original  projec- 
tors, however,  took  the  matter  wholly  into  their  own 
hands,  raised  a  subscription  to  pay  expenses,  and  re- 
solved to  call  their  lectures  "The  Universal  Brother- 
hood Course,"  —  for  no  other  reason,  that  I  can  di- 
vine, but  that  they  had  set  the  whole  village  by  the 
ears.  They  invited  that  distinguished  young  apostle 
of  Reform,  Mr.  Philip  Vandal,  to  deliver  the  opening 
lecture.  He  has  just  done  so,  and,  from  what  I  have 
heard  about  his  discourse,  it  would  have  been  fitter 
as  the  introductory  to  a  nunnery  of  Kilkenny  cats 
than  to  anything  like  universal  brotherhood.  He 
opened  our  lyceum  as  if  it  had  been  an  oyster,  with- 
out any  regard  for  the  feelings  of  those  inside.  He 
pitched  into  the  world  in  general,  and  all  his  neigh- 
bors past  and  present  in  particular.  Even  the  babe 
unborn  did  not  escape  some  unsavory  epithets  in  the 
way  of  vaticination.  I  sat  down,  meaning  to  write  you 
[     208     1 


AND  FIGURES  OF  SPEECH-MAKERS 

an  essay  on  "The  Right  of  Private  Judgment  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  Right  of  Public  Vituperation"; 
but  I  forbear.  It  may  be  that  I  do  not  understand  the 
nature  of  philanthropy. 

Why,  here  is  Philip  Vandal,  for  example.  He  loves 
his  kind  so  much  that  he  has  not  a  word  softer  than  a 
brickbat  for  a  single  mother's  son  of  them.  He  goes 
about  to  save  them  by  proving  that  not  one  of  them 
is  worth  damning.  And  he  does  it  all  from  the  point 
of  view  of  an  early  (a  knurly)  Christian.  Let  me  illus- 
trate. I  was  sauntering  along  Broadway  once,  and 
was  attracted  by  a  bird-fancier's  shop.  I  like  dealers 
in  out-of-the-way  things,  —  traders  in  bigotry  and 
virtue  are  too  common,  —  and  so  I  went  in.  The  gem 
of  the  collection  was  a  terrier,  —  a  perfect  beauty, 
uglier  than  philanthropy  itself,  and  hairier,  as  a  Cock- 
ney would  say,  than  the  'ole  British  hairystocracy. 
"A'n't  he  a  stunner?"  said  my  disrespectable  friend, 
the  master  of  the  shop.  "Ah,  you  should  see  him 
worry  a  rat!  He  does  it  like  a  puffic  Christian!"  Since 
then,  the  world  has  been  divided  for  me  into  Chris- 
tians and  perfect  Christians;  and  I  find  so  many  of 
the  latter  species  in  proportion  to  the  former,  that  I 
begin  to  pity  the  rats.  They  (the  rats)  have  at  least 
one  virtue,  —  they  are  not  eloquent. 

It  is,  I  think,  a  universally  recognized  truth  of 
natural  history,  that  a  young  lady  is  sure  to  fall  in 
love  with  a  young  man  for  whom  she  feels  at  first  an 
[     209     1 


A  PLEA  FOR  FREEDOM  FROM  SPEECH 

unconquerable  aversion;  and  it  must  be  on  the  same 
principle  that  the  first  symptoms  of  love  for  our 
neighbor  almost  always  manifest  themselves  in  a 
violent  disgust  at  the  world  in  general,  on  the  part  of 
the  apostles  of  that  gospel.  They  give  every  token  of 
hating  their  neighbors  consumedly;  argal,  they  are 
going  to  be  madly  enamored  of  them.  Or,  perhaps, 
this  is  the  manner  in  which  Universal  Brotherhood 
shows  itself  in  people  who  wilfully  subject  themselves 
to  infection  as  a  prophylactic.  In  the  natural  way  we 
might  find  the  disease  inconvenient  and  even  expen- 
sive; but  thus  vaccinated  with  virus  from  the  udders 
(whatever  they  may  be)  that  yield  the  (butter-)  milk 
of  human  kindness,  the  inconvenience  is  slight,  and 
we  are  able  still  to  go  about  our  ordinary  business  of 
detesting  our  brethren  as  usual.  It  only  shows  that 
the  milder  type  of  the  disease  has  penetrated  the  sys- 
tem, which  will  thus  be  enabled  to  out-Jenneral  its 
more  dangerous  congener.  Before  long  we  shall  have 
physicians  of  our  ailing  social  system  writing  to  the 
"Weekly  Brandreth's  Pill"  somewhat  on  this  wise: 

—  "I  have  a  very  marked  and  hopeful  case  in  Pe- 
quawgus  Four  Corners.  Miss  Hepzibah  Tarbell, 
daughter  of  that  archenemy  of  his  kind,  Deacon 
Joash  T.,  attended  only  one  of  my  lectures.  In  a  day 
or  two  the  symptoms  of  eruption  were  most  encour- 
aging. She  has  already  quarrelled  with  all  her  family, 

—  accusing  her  father  of  bigamy,  her  uncle  Benoni 

[      210     1 


AKD  FIGURES  OF  SPEECH-MAKERS 

of  polytheism,  her  brother  Zeno  C.  of  aneurism,  and 
her  sister  Eudoxy  Trithemia  of  the  variation  of  the 
magnetic  needle.  If  ever  hopes  of  seeing  a  perfect  case 
of  Primitive  Christian  were  well-founded,  I  think  we 
may  entertain  them  now." 

What  I  chiefly  object  to  in  the  general-denuncia- 
tion sort  of  reformers  is  that  they  make  no  allowance 
for  character  and  temperament.  They  wish  to  repeal 
universal  laws,  and  to  patch  our  natural  skins  for  us, 
as  if  they  always  wanted  mending.  That  while  they 
talk  so  much  of  the  godlike  nature  of  man,  they 
should  so  forget  the  human  natures  of  men!  The 
Flathead  Indian  squeezes  the  child's  skull  between 
two  boards  till  it  shapes  itself  into  a  kind  of  gambrel 
roof  against  the  rain,  —  the  readiest  way,  perhaps,  of 
uniforming  a  tribe  that  wear  no  clothes.  But  does  he 
alter  the  inside  of  the  head?  Not  a  hair's-breadth. 
You  remember  the  striking  old  gnomic  poem  that 
tells  how  Aaron,  in  a  moment  of  fanatical  zeal  against 
that  member  by  which  mankind  are  so  readily  led 
into  mischief,  proposes  a  rhinotomic  sacrifice  to 
Moses?  What  is  the  answer  of  the  experienced  law- 
giver? 

Says  Moses  to  Aaron, 
"  'T  is  the  fashion  to  wear  'em! '  " 

Shall  we  advise  the  Tadpole  to  get  his  tail  cut  off,  as 

a  badge  of  the  reptile  nature  in  him,  and  to  achieve 

the  higher  sphere  of  the  Croakers  at  a  single  hop? 

[     211     1 


A  PLEA  FOR  FREEDOM  FROM  SPEECH 

Why,  it  is  all  he  steers  by;  without  it,  he  would  be  as 
helpless  as  a  compass  under  the  flare  of  Northern 
Lights;  and  he  no  doubt  regards  it  as  a  mark  of  blood, 
the  proof  of  his  kinship  with  the  preadamite  family 
of  the  Saurians.  Shall  we  send  missionaries  to  the 
Bear  to  warn  him  against  raw  chestnuts,  because 
they  are  sometimes  so  discomforting  to  our  human 
intestines,  which  are  so  like  his  own?  One  sermon 
from  the  colic  were  worth  the  whole  American  Board. 
Moreover,  as  an  author,  I  protest  in  the  name  of 
universal  Grub  Street  against  a  unanimity  in  good- 
ness. Not  to  mention  that  a  Quaker  world,  all  faded 
out  to  an  autumnal  drab,  would  be  a  little  tedious,  — 
what  should  we  do  for  the  villain  of  our  tragedy  or 
novel?  No  rascals,  no  literature.  You  have  your 
choice.  Were  we  weak  enough  to  consent  to  a  sudden 
homogeneousness  in  virtue,  many  industrious  per- 
sons would  be  thrown  out  of  employment.  The  wife 
and  mother,  for  example,  with  as  indeterminate  a 
number  of  children  as  the  Martyr  Rogers,  who  visits 
me  monthly,  —  what  claim  would  she  have  upon  me, 
were  not  her  husband  forever  taking  to  drink,  or  the 
penitentiary,  or  Spiritualism?  The  pusillanimous 
lapse  of  her  lord  into  morality  would  not  only  take 
the  very  ground  of  her  invention  from  under  her  feet, 
but  would  rob  her  and  him  of  an  income  that  sustains 
them  both  in  blissful  independence  of  the  curse  of 
Adam.  But  do  not  let  us  be  disheartened.  Nature  is 
[     212     1 


AND  FIGURES  OF  SPEECH-MAKERS 

strong;  she  is  persistent;  she  completes  her  syllogism 
after  we  have  long  been  feeding  the  roots  of  her 
grasses,  and  has  her  own  way  in  spite  of  us.  Some 
ancestral  Cromwellian  trooper  leaps  to  life  again  in 
Nathaniel  Greene,  and  makes  a  general  of  him,  to 
confute  five  generations  of  Broadbrims.  The  Puri- 
tans were  good  in  their  way,  and  we  enjoy  them 
highly  as  a  preterite  phenomenon;  but  they  were  not 
good  at  cakes  and  ale,  and  that  is  one  reason  why 
they  are  a  preterite  phenomenon. 

I  suppose  we  are  all  willing  to  let  a  public  censor 
like  P.  V.  run  amuck  whenever  he  likes,  —  so  it  be 
not  down  our  street.  I  confess  to  a  good  deal  of  tol- 
erance in  this  respect,  and,  when  I  live  in  No.  21, 
have  plenty  of  stoicism  to  spare  for  the  griefs  of  the 
dwellers  in  No.  23.  Indeed,  I  agreed  with  our  young 
Cato  heartily  in  what  he  said  about  Statues.  We 
must  have  an  Act  for  the  Suppression,  either  of 
Great  Men,  or  else  of  Sculptors.  I  have  not  quite 
made  up  my  mind  which  are  the  greater  nuisances; 
but  I  am  sure  of  this,  that  there  are  too  many  of  both. 
They  used  to  be  rare  (to  use  a  Yankeeism  omitted 
by  Bartlett),  but  nowadays  they  are  overdone.  I  am 
half  inclined  to  think  that  the  sculptors  club  to- 
gether to  write  folks  up  during  their  lives  in  the 
newspapers,  quieting  their  consciences  with  the  hope 
of  some  day  making  them  look  so  mean  in  bronze  or 
marble  as  to  make  all  square  again.  Or  do  we  really 
[     213     1 


A  PLEA  FOR  FREEDOM  FROM  SPEECH 

have  so  many?  Can't  they  help  growing  twelve  feet 
high  in  this  new  soil,  any  more  than  our  maize?  I  sus- 
pect that  Posterity  will  not  thank  us  for  the  heredi- 
tary disease  of  Carrara  we  are  entailing  on  him,  and 
will  try  some  heroic  remedy,  perhaps  lithotripsy. 

Nor  was  I  troubled  by  what  Mr.  Vandal  said  about 
the  late  Benjamin  Webster.  I  am  not  a  Boston  man, 
and  have,  therefore,  the  privilege  of  thinking  for  my- 
self. Nor  do  I  object  to  his  claiming  for  women  the 
right  to  make  books  and  pictures  and  (shall  I  say  it?) 
statues,  —  only  this  last  becomes  a  grave  matter,  if 
we  are  to  have  statues  of  all  the  great  women,  too! 
To  be  sure,  there  will  not  be  the  trousers-difficulty,  — 
at  least,  not  at  present;  what  we  may  come  to  is  none 
of  my  affair.  I  even  go  beyond  him  in  my  opinions  on 
what  is  called  the  Woman  Question.  In  the  gift  of 
speech,  they  have  always  had  the  advantage  of  us; 
and  though  the  jealousy  of  the  other  sex  have  de- 
prived us  of  the  orations  of  Xantippe,  yet  even  De- 
mosthenes does  not  seem  to  have  produced  greater 
effects,  if  we  may  take  the  word  of  Socrates  for  it,  — 
as  I,  for  one,  very  gladly  do. 

No,  —  what  I  complain  of  is  not  the  lecturer's 
opinions,  but  the  eloquence  with  which  he  expressed 
them.  He  does  not  like  statues  better  than  I  do;  but 
is  it  possible  that  he  fails  to  see  that  the  one  nuisance 
leads  directly  to  the  other,  and  that  we  set  up  three 
images  of  Talkers  for  one  to  any  kind  of  man  who 
[     £14     ] 


AKD  FIGURES  OF  SPEECH-MAKERS 

was  useful  in  his  generation?  Let  him  beware,  or  he 
will  himself  be  petrified  after  death.  Boston  seems  to 
be  specially  unfortunate.  She  has  more  statues  and 
more  speakers  than  any  other  city  on  this  continent. 
I  have  with  my  own  eyes  seen  a  book  called  "The 
Hundred  Boston  Orators."  This  would  seem  to  give 
her  a  fairer  title  to  be  called  the  tire  than  the  hub  of 
creation.  What  with  the  speeches  of  her  great  men 
while  they  are  alive,  and  those  of  her  surviving  great 
men  about  those  aforesaid  after  they  are  dead,  and 
those  we  look  forward  to  from  her  ditto  ditto  yet  to  be 
upon  her  ditto  ditto  now  in  being,  and  those  of  her 
paulopost  ditto  ditto  upon  her  ditto  ditto  yet  to  be,  and 
those  —  But  I  am  getting  into  the  house  that  Jack 
built. 

And  yet  I  remember  once  visiting  the  Massachu- 
setts State  House  and  being  struck  with  the  Pytha- 
gorean fish  hung  on  high  in  the  Representatives' 
Chamber,  the  emblem  of  a  silence  too  sacred,  as 
would  seem,  to  be  observed  except  on  Sundays.  Elo- 
quent Philip  Vandal,  I  appeal  to  you  as  a  man  and  a 
brother,  let  us  two  form  (not  an  Antediluvian,  for 
there  are  plenty,  but)  an  Antidiluvian  Society  against 
the  flood  of  milk-and-water  that  threatens  the  land. 
Let  us  adopt  as  our  creed  these  two  propositions :  — 
I.  Tongues  were  given  us  to  be  held. 

II.  Dumbness  sets  the  brute  below  the  man:  Silence 
elevates  the  man  above  the  brute. 
[     215     ] 


A  PLEA  FOR  FREEDOM  FROM  SPEECH 

Every  one  of  those  hundred  orators  is  to  me  a  more 
fearfid  thought  than  that  of  a  hundred  men  gather- 
ing samphire.  And  when  we  take  into  account  how 
large  a  portion  of  them  (if  the  present  mania  hold) 
are  likely  to  be  commemorated  in  stone  or  some  even 
more  durable  material,  the  conception  is  positively 
stunning. 

Let  us  settle  all  scores  by  subscribing  to  a  colos- 
sal statue  of  the  late  Town  Crier  in  bell-metal,  with 
the  inscription,  "vox  et  pkjeterea  nihil,"  as  a 
comprehensive  tribute  to  oratorical  powers  in  gen- 
eral. He,  at  least,  never  betrayed  his  clients.  As  it  is, 
there  is  no  end  to  it.  We  are  to  set  up  Horatius  Vir  in 
eflSgy  for  inventing  the  Normal  Schoolmaster,  and 
by  and  by  we  shall  be  called  on  to  do  the  same  ill- 
turn  for  Elihu  Mulciber  for  getting  uselessly  learned 
(as  if  any  man  had  ideas  enough  for  twenty  lan- 
guages!) without  any  schoolmaster  at  all.  We  are 
the  victims  of  a  droll  antithesis.  Daniel  would  not 
give  in  to  Nebuchadnezzar's  taste  in  statuary,  and 
we  are  called  on  to  fall  down  and  worship  an  image  of 
Daniel  which  the  Assyrian  monarch  would  have  gone 
to  grass  again  sooner  than  have  it  in  his  back-parlor. 
I  do  not  think  lions  are  agreeable,  especially  the 
shaved-poodle  variety  one  is  so  apt  to  encounter;  — 
I  met  one  once  at  an  evening  party.  But  I  would  be 
thrown  into  a  den  of  them  rather  than  sleep  in  the 
same  room  with  that  statue.  Posterity  will  think  we 
[     216     1 


AXD  FIGURES  OF  SPEECH-MAKERS 

cut  pretty  figures  indeed  in  the  monumental  line! 
Perhaps  there  is  a  gleam  of  hope  and  a  symptom  of 
convalescence  in  the  fact  that  the  Prince  of  Wales, 
during  his  late  visit,  got  off  without  a  single  speech. 
The  cheerful  hospitalities  of  Mount  Auburn  were 
offered  to  him,  as  to  all  distinguished  strangers,  but 
nothing  more  melancholy.  In  his  case  I  doubt  the  ex- 
pediency of  the  omission.  Had  we  set  a  score  or  two 
of  orators  on  him  and  his  suite,  it  would  have  given 
them  a  more  intimidating  notion  of  the  offensive 
powers  of  the  country  than  West  Point  and  all  the 
Navy  Yards  put  together. 

In  the  name  of  our  common  humanity,  consider, 
too,  what  shifts  our  friends  in  the  sculpin  line  (as 
we  should  call  them  in  Chesumpscot)  are  put  to  for 
originality  of  design,  and  what  the  country  has  to 
pay  for  it.  The  Clark  Mills  (that  turns  out  equestrian 
statues  as  the  Stark  Mills  do  calico-patterns)  has 
pocketed  fifty  thousand  dollars  for  making  a  very 
dead  bronze  horse  stand  on  his  hind  legs.  For  twenty- 
five  cents  I  have  seen  a  man  at  the  circus  do  some- 
thing more  wonderful,  —  make  a  very  living  bay 
horse  dance  a  redowa  round  the  amphitheatre  on  his 
(it  occurs  to  me  that  hind  legs  is  indelicate)  posterior 
extremities  to  the  wayward  music  of  an  out-of-town 
(Scotice,  out-o'-toon)  band.  Now,  I  will  make  a 
handsome  offer  to  the  public.  I  propose  for  twenty- 
five  thousand  dollars  to  suppress  my  design  for  an 
[     217     ] 


A  PLEA  FOR  FREEDOM  FROM  SPEECH 

equestrian  statue  of  a  distinguished  general  oflScer 
as  he  would  have  appeared  at  the  Battle  of  Buena 
Vista.  This  monument  is  intended  as  a  weathercock 
to  crown  the  new  dome  of  the  Capitol  at  Washington. 
By  this  happy  contrivance,  the  horse  will  be  freed 
from  the  degrading  necessity  of  touching  the  earth 
at  all,  —  thus  distancing  Mr.  Mills  by  two  feet  in 
the  race  for  originality.  The  pivot  is  to  be  placed  so 
far  behind  the  middle  of  the  horse,  that  the  statue, 
like  its  original,  will  always  indicate  which  way  the 
wind  blows  by  going  along  with  it.  The  inferior  ani- 
mal I  have  resolved  to  model  from  a  spirited  saw- 
horse  in  my  own  collection.  In  this  way  I  shall  com- 
bine two  striking  advantages.  The  advocates  of  the 
Ideal  in  Art  cannot  fail  to  be  pleased  with  a  charger 
which  embodies,  as  it  were,  merely  the  abstract 
notion  or  quality.  Horse,  and  the  attention  of  the 
spectator  will  not  be  distracted  from  the  principal 
figure.  The  material  to  be  pure  brass.  I  have  also 
in  progress  an  allegorical  group  commemorative  of 
Governor  Wise.  This,  like- Wise,  represents  only  a 
potentiality.  I  have  chosen,  as  worthy  of  commem- 
oration, the  moment  when  and  the  method  by  which 
the  Governor  meant  to  seize  the  Treasury  at  Wash- 
ington. His  Excellency  is  modelled  in  the  act  of  mak- 
ing one  of  his  speeches.  Before  him  a  despairing  re- 
porter kills  himself  by  falling  on  his  own  steel  pen; 
a  broken  telegraph  wire  hints  at  the  weight  of  the 
[     218     1 


AND  FIGURES  OF  SPEECH-MAKERS 

thoughts  to  which  it  has  found  itself  inadequate; 
while  the  Army  and  Navy  of  the  United  States  are 
conjointly  typified  in  a  horse-marine  who  flies  head- 
long with  his  hands  pressed  convulsively  over  his 
ears.  I  think  I  shall  be  able  to  have  this  ready  for 
exhibition  by  the  time  Mr.  Wise  is  nominated  for  the 
Presidency,  —  certainly  before  he  is  elected.  The 
material  to  be  plaster,  made  of  the  shells  of  those 
oysters  with  which  Virginia  shall  have  paid  her  pub- 
lic debt.  It  may  be  objected,  that  plaster  is  not 
durable  enough  for  verisimilitude,  since  bronze  itself 
could  hardly  be  expected  to  outlast  one  of  the  Gov- 
ernor's speeches.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that 
his  mere  effigy  cannot,  like  its  prototype,  have  the 
pleasure  of  hearing  itself  talk;  so  that  to  the  mind 
of  the  spectator  the  oratorical  despotism  is  tempered 
with  some  reasonable  hope  of  silence.  This  design, 
also,  is  intended  only  in  terrorem,  and  will  be  sup- 
pressed for  an  adequate  consideration. 

I  find  one  comfort,  however,  in  the  very  hideous- 
ness  of  our  statues.  The  fear  of  what  the  sculptors 
will  do  for  them  after  they  are  gone  may  deter  those 
who  are  careful  of  their  memories  from  talking  them- 
selves into  greatness.  It  is  plain  that  Mr.  Caleb 
Gushing  has  begun  to  feel  a  wholesome  dread  of  this 
posthumous  retribution.  I  cannot  in  any  other  way 
account  for  that  nightmare  of  the  solitary  horseman 
on  the  edge  of  the  horizon,  in  his  Hartford  Speech. 
I     219     1 


A  PLEA  FOR  FREEDOM  FROM  SPEECH 

His  imagination  is  infected  with  the  terrible  con- 
sciousness, that  Mr.  Mills,  as  the  younger  man,  will, 
in  the  course  of  Nature,  survive  him,  and  will  be 
left  loose  to  seek  new  victims  of  his  nefarious  designs. 
Formerly  the  punishment  of  the  wooden  horse  was 
a  degradation  inflicted  on  private  soldiers  only;  but 
Mr.  Mills  (whose  genius  could  make  even  Pegasus 
look  wooden,  in  whatever  material)  flies  at  higher 
game,  and  will  be  content  with  nothing  short  of  a 
general. 

Mr.  Gushing  advises  extreme  measures.  He 
counsels  us  to  sell  our  real  estate  and  stocks,  and 
to  leave  a  country  where  no  man's  reputation  with 
posterity  is  safe,  being  merely  as  clay  in  the  hands 
of  the  sculptor.  To  a  mind  undisturbed  by  the  terror 
natural  in  one  whose  military  reputation  insures  his 
cutting  and  running  (I  mean,  of  course,  in  marble 
and  bronze),  the  question  becomes  an  interesting 
one,  —  To  whom,  in  case  of  a  general  exodus,  shall 
we  sell?  The  statues  will  have  the  land  all  to  them- 
selves, —  until  the  Aztecs,  perhaps,  repeopling  their 
ancient  heritage,  shall  pay  divine  honors  to  these 
images,  whose  ugliness  will  revive  the  traditions  of 
the  classic  period  of  Mexican  Art.  For  my  own  part, 
I  never  look  at  one  of  them  now  without  thinking  of 
at  least  one  human  sacrifice. 

I  doubt  the  feasibility  of  Mr.  Cushing's  proposal, 
and  yet  something  ought  to  be  done.  We  must  put 
[     220     1 


AND  FIGURES  OF  SPEECH-MAKERS 

up  with  what  we  have  already,  I  suppose,  and  let 
Mr.  Webster  stand  threatening  to  blow  us  all  up 
with  his  pistol  pointed  at  the  elongated  keg  of  gun- 
powder on  which  his  left  hand  rests,  —  no  bad  type 
of  the  great  man's  state  of  mind  after  the  nomination 
of  General  Taylor,  or  of  what  a  country  member 
would  call  a  penal  statue.  But  do  we  reflect  that 
Vermont  is  half  marble,  and  that  Lake  Superior 
can  send  us  bronze  enough  for  regiments  of  statues? 
I  go  back  to  my  first  plan  of  a  prohibitory  enactment. 
I  had  even  gone  so  far  as  to  make  a  rough  draught 
of  an  Act  for  the  Better  Observance  of  the  Second 
Commandment;  but  it  occurred  to  me  that  con- 
victions under  it  would  be  doubtful,  from  the  diflS- 
culty  of  satisfying  a  jury  that  our  graven  images  did 
really  present  a  likeness  to  any  of  the  objects  enumer- 
ated in  the  divine  ordinance.  Perhaps  a  double- 
barrelled  statute  might  be  contrived  that  would 
meet  both  the  oratorical  and  the  monumental  dif- 
ficulty. Let  a  law  be  passed  that  all  speeches  deliv- 
ered more  for  the  benefit  of  the  orator  than  that  of 
the  audience,  and  all  eulogistic  ones  of  whatever 
description,  be  pronounced  in  the  chapel  of  the  Deaf 
and  Dumb  asylum,  and  all  statues  be  set  up  within 
the  grounds  of  the  Institution  for  the  Blind.  Let  the 
penalty  for  infringement  in  the  one  case  be  to  read 
the  last  President's  Message,  and  in  the  other  to  look 
at  the  Webster  statue  one  hour  a  day,  for  a  term  not 
[     221     1 


A  PLEA  FOR  FREEDOM  FROM  SPEECH 

so  long  as  to  violate  the  spirit  of  the  law  forbidding 
cruel  and  unusual  punishments. 

Perhaps  it  is  too  much  to  expect  of  our  legislators 
that  they  should  pass  so  self-denying  an  ordinance. 
They  might,  perhaps,  make  all  oratory  but  their 
own  penal,  and  then  (who  knows?)  the  reports  of 
their  debates  might  be  read  by  the  few  unhappy  per- 
sons who  were  demoniacally  possessed  by  a  passion 
for  that  kind  of  thing,  as  girls  are  sometimes  said  to 
be  by  an  appetite  for  slate  pencils.  Vita  brevis,  lingua 
longa.  I  protest  that  among  lawgivers  I  respect 
Numa,  who  declared,  that,  of  all  the  Camense,  Tacita 
was  most  worthy  of  reverence.  The  ancient  Greeks 
also  (though  they  left  too  much  oratory  behind 
them)  had  some  good  notions,  especially  if  we  con- 
sider that  they  had  not,  like  modem  Europe,  the 
advantage  of  communication  with  America.  Now 
the  Greeks  had  a  Muse  of  Beginning,  and  the  wonder 
is,  considering  how  easy  it  is  to  talk  and  how  hard 
to  say  anything,  that  they  did  not  hit  upon  that 
other  and  more  excellent  Muse  of  Leaving-off.  The 
Spartans,  I  suspect,  found  her  out  and  kept  her  self- 
ishly to  themselves.  She  were  indeed  a  goddess  to  be 
worshipped,  a  true  Sister  of  Charity  among  that 
loquacious  sisterhood! 

Endlessness  is  the  order  of  the  day.  I  ask  you  to 
compare  Plutarch's  lives  of  demigods  and  heroes 
with  our  modem  biographies  of  deminoughts  and 
[     222     J 


ANI>  FIGURES  OF  SPEECH-MAKERS 

zeroes.  Those  will  appear  but  tailors  and  ninth-parts 
of  men  in  comparison  with  these,  every  one  of  whom 
would  seem  to  have  had  nine  lives,  like  a  cat,  to 
justify  such  prolixity.  Yet  the  evils  of  print  are  as 
dust  in  the  balance  to  those  of  speech. 

We  were  doing  very  well  in  Chesumpscot,  but  the 
Lyceum  has  ruined  all.  There  are  now  two  debating 
clubs,  seminaries  of  multiloquence.  A  few  of  us  old- 
fashioned  fellows  have  got  up  an  opposition  club 
and  called  it  "The  Jolly  Oysters."  No  member  is 
allowed  to  open  his  mouth  except  at  high-tide  by  the 
calendar.  We  have  biennial  festivals  on  the  evening 
of  election  day,  when  the  constituency  avenges  itself 
in  some  small  measure  on  its  Representative  elect  by 
sending  a  baker's  dozen  of  orators  to  congratulate 
him. 

But  I  am  falling  into  the  very  vice  I  condemn,  — 
like  Carlyle,  who  has  talked  a  quarter  of  a  century 
in  praise  of  holding  your  tongue.  And  yet  something 
should  be  done  about  it.  Even  when  we  get  one 
orator  safely  underground,  there  are  ten  to  pro- 
nounce his  eulogy,  and  twenty  to  do  it  over  again 
when  the  meeting  is  held  about  the  inevitable  statue. 
I  go  to  listen:  we  all  go:  we  are  under  a  spell.  *T  is 
true,  I  find  a  casual  refuge  in  sleep;  for  Drummond 
of  Hawthornden  was  wrong  when  he  called  Sleep  the 
child  of  Silence.  Speech  begets  her  as  often.  But  there 
is  no  sure  refuge  save  in  Death;  and  when  my  life  is 
[     223     1 


A  PLEA  FOR  FREEDOM  FROM  SPEECH 

closed  untimely,  let  there  be  written  on  my  head- 
stone, with  impartial  application  to  these  Black 
Brunswickers  mounted  on  the  high  horse  of  oratory 
and  to  our  equestrian  statues,  — 
Os  sublime  did  it! 


THE  END 


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